


Neville Longbottom and the Garden of the Hesperides

by FernWithy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-06 23:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10347327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernWithy/pseuds/FernWithy
Summary: In an alternate history, Voldemort chose baby Neville Longbottom as his enemy, leaving Harry Potter to grow up as he would have.  When Neville reaches Hogwarts for his first year -- with lifetime best friend Harry at his side -- they discover the secrets of their past and their future.





	1. The Cry in the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Halloween, 1981, Augusta Longbottom's life is turned upside down when her son and daughter-in-law are murdered, leaving her as guardian to her one-year-old grandson, Neville.

  
No one had ever accused Augusta Denbright Longbottom of being a free thinker, and she would in fact have taken great offense to such a characterization, at least as she had any understanding of it.  
  
Had she been under the misperception that the phrase meant what its literal meaning implied, she might have taken less umbrage. She was not, after all, _bound_ to believe or behave as she did. She was, in fact, free to go out and dance at a Muggle disco, if she so chose. She did not so choose.  
  
She was not, however, laboring under any such misperception. The way the young people used the phrase, it meant nothing more than "scofflaw," as far as she could tell. It was just an excuse for young people to dress in horrid Muggle clothes, dance at discos, and complain about how their elders didn't understand how much the world had changed.  
  
Augusta was sixty years old. She had seen many makeovers in the course of her life, but she had never seen anything _change_. The ones who tended to bleat most loudly on the subject were inevitably the ones most obviously repeating one old theme or another that they'd decided was newfangled and smart. They were often dangerous, because they quite enjoyed their makeovers, and didn't care about what damage was left in their wakes, once they got bored with what they perceived as a novelty.  
  
No, life went on, as life had always gone on. There were improvements, certainly, and changes in whatever was faddish at the moment. Right now, two fads were in deadly competition with one another, of course, as passionate fads often were. The old families had decided to fancy themselves under attack, their culture in imminent danger of collapse. This wasn't helped by the young "free thinkers" whose antics throughout the past decade had included spray-painting war memorials, accusing their great-grandparents of being obsolete, and, of course, amplified flatulence during open meetings of the Wizengamot, to the point where they'd been kicked out… and now complained about being denied their rights.  
  
This annoyed her, of course, but she saved her rage for the others. As a pure-blood witch of an old family, she was offended by the young radicals on the other side, the ones who called themselves Death Eaters. They had taken the old culture, the upbringing she loved and honored, and turned it into an excuse for torture and murder. Augusta had been raised to believe -- and still believed -- that the magical world should be open to anyone who could do magic, oddly enough, and that anyone could become a part of it. The fact that someone was Muggle-born didn't mean that he or she couldn't appreciate and contribute to the culture. The presence of a Muggle-born spouse didn't mean that an old family would suddenly lose their way. It was a ridiculous belief, and their behavior in support of it had now sullied everything she had always loved. That they claimed this would somehow rescue the culture they were destroying with their own behavior infuriated her.  
  
She had spoken out on the subject.  
  
Vehemently and frequently.  
  
So they had killed her husband. Clarence had done very little about the great fights. He preferred puttering around in the garden to lecturing the Wizengamot. He'd had more than enough of fighting after Grindelwald's wars. He was a Hufflepuff, and wanted to be about the business of living life. But Augusta had not been a Hufflepuff. She had been a Gryffindor, and fighting was in her nature. So she had lectured. She had written for the _Prophet_. She had helped Minerva McGonagall set up a spy network, though she doubted this was well known even now. She had defended Muggle-born Hogwarts students in Diagon Alley (how it burned in her blood that these cowards attacked _children_ ).  
  
And one day eleven years ago, she'd come home to find the Dark Mark hovering over Clarence's garden. Frank had been away at Hogwarts. It was his seventh year. She'd had to go collect him, and she supposed, though he had not discussed the subject with her, that that was when he'd joined Dumbledore's Order. They had both been operating in it for a good long time before either discovered the other's involvement.  
  
It had been at the wedding, of course. The day Frank married Alice Hyslop, who'd been an apprentice Auror with him, the Death Eaters had tried to disrupt the ceremony. Augusta had been prepared to act. She didn't realize that the entire wedding party was also prepared until the wands came out. She hadn't entirely approved of Alice until she saw that, but she supposed any girl who would come to her own wedding prepared to go to war was worthy of Frank.  
  
Augusta had advised them to wait before starting their family. The fight would be over soon. They waited almost eight years after the wedding, but Frank had enough of Clarence in him, apparently, that he wanted to get their lives started. And so, they had brought baby Neville into the world.  
  
And promptly put themselves in the sightline of the maniac who led the Death Eaters.  
  
Augusta had no idea what had prompted this rage about the baby, but it had caused Frank and Alice to leave. They were somewhere safe. There was a Fidelius spell, kept by her foolish brother, Algie. No one suspected him, because most people forgot he existed. He just stayed in his little house and played with his Muggle train set. He might have actually forgotten where they were by now.  
  
She looked out the window at the dark fields. It was a chilly Halloween night. She'd decorated earlier, and now, the candles reflected in the windows, making her own reflection seem to twinkle. The magical gardens close to the house -- Clarence's pride and joy -- were still in bloom, but the Muggle plants that formed something of a screen for them were already going to seed. An old elm tree was nearly denuded by the front gate.  
  
She smiled to herself. Frank had always loved this time of year, looking at the way the two gardens contrasted. Clarence would carry him around on his shoulders and --  
  
She frowned.  
  
A shape had just materialized under the elm tree.  
  
A woman.  
  
_Running_.  
  
Augusta blinked and shook her head. The woman was running full tilt toward the Apparition border, which would certainly keep her out if she hit it at full speed. It might even hurt her, which was fine if she were a Death Eater, but… but…  
  
Something cold wrapped around Augusta's heart, and she waved her wand. Lights came up -- Muggle style lights that seemed like anything one might find on a local estate, though they weren't connected to any electrical grid. The light was entirely magical, just masquerading.  
  
It flooded the garden, and caught on something red.  
  
An Auror's robe.  
  
And a flow of long red hair above it.  
  
"Mrs. Longbottom!" the woman screamed. "Mrs. Longbottom! Let me in!"  
  
Augusta wasn't a fool, and she knew about Polyjuice Potion. She Apparated down to the barrier, where the young woman was waving wildly, stopping on the inside of it.  
  
"It's me!" the woman said, agitated. "Lily, Frank's apprentice!" She must have seen something suspicious in Augusta's eyes because she made a surrendering motion with her hand. "It's… Frank told me that, if I ever needed to convince you, I should say that his father once told him that he liked dancing the jitterbug with you."  
  
Augusta frowned. She hadn't cared for the jitterbug, but Clarence _had_ enjoyed it and she had indulged him. No one else knew it.  
  
She did the charm to open the barrier.  
  
The woman ran in. "Where are they? Where are Frank and Alice?"  
  
"I'm not their secret keeper. I can't say. I don't know. What did you say your name was?"  
  
"Lily Potter. I was Frank's apprentice before I left the department. I'm with the Order now. It's very important that we find them. We… the news…"  
  
"What news? What's happening, girl?"  
  
"My son was born at the same time as Frank's boy. Well, a day later. But--"  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"There was a prophecy. That's why we all went into hiding. We were sure it was about Harry. We had a spy inside, and the Death Eaters were on and on about a half-blood. But our spy came back tonight. There was a sudden change in plan. Voldemort is going after Neville."  
  
"Their secret keeper… he won't…" Augusta pushed Lily back over the barrier and closed it up. "Come with me," she said, and took the woman's arm.  
  
A moment later, they Apparated into Tebworth, on a small lane that ran between farms. A small farmhouse lit by lanterns sat nestled in a hollow.  
  
From an upper window, Augusta could hear the running of the little Muggle train set.  
  
"Algie!" she called. "Algie!"  
  
She pulled Lily Potter along, raising her wand to do the unlocking spells before she realized that they'd all been broken. There was magical wreckage along the path.  
  
She looked at Lily, and they both broke into a run.  
  
Inside the house, everything Algie owned was strewn around. Pictures had fallen from the walls. Cloaks were torn from the closets. Augusta registered it in an instant, and ran upstairs. She would pay for this action in the coming days. Her legs would be so stiff that she could barely move. But she didn't care.  
  
Something had happened to her foolish, careless brother. They _had_ remembered that he existed.  
  
She turned at the top of the stairs, feeling Lily a few paces behind her. At the end of the hall, the door to his train room was open.  
  
She ran in, wand raised.  
  
It was too late.  
  
Algie was spread out on his train table, the tracks going around him. The train was spitting up green smoke, and a miniature Dark Mark hovered above the scene.  
  
"Algie," Augusta said, her voice shaking.  
  
Lily Potter put a hand on her arm. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Longbottom."  
  
"He's my little brother…" She put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my… Oh, dear. We made him secret keeper because he never was out much. No one knew about him. No one… Oh, Algie."  
  
"I'm sorry," Lily said again. "But… if the secret keeper is dead, the secret can be discovered. Where are they, Mrs. Longbottom? Where are Frank and Alice? Would Algie have told?"  
  
"He didn't need to," Augusta said, pointing at the train set. It wove through the countryside, past a signpost that pointed to different wizarding stations. It left a trail of green smoke through the Yorkshire moors he had created, leading to…  
  
"Oh!" Lily put her hand to her head. "Yes. The safe house outside Ilkley. The garden house. We had a choice. Frank wanted the garden. After the secrets were sealed, I… forgot about it. The garden." She took Augusta's hand, and this time, she was the one who Apparated, pulling Augusta along beside her.  
  
They didn't need to look for it.  
  
There was no miniature Dark Mark, no fooling with trains and toys.  
  
On the moors, a walled garden rose up, part of a long-abandoned wizard estate, the Dark Mark above it was huge, swallowing the world. Part of the garden wall had collapsed, and Augusta could see the workman's cottage inside already. It was a pile of rubble.  
  
"Frank!" Augusta yelled. "Frank, where are you? Frank…"  
  
But it was a pointless question.  
  
She saw him as soon as she cleared the wall.  
  
He was lying spread-eagled along the path, beside a huge patch of heather, bloodied from the fall onto the gravel, but otherwise unmarked. Unbreathing.  
  
Alice was lying further into the garden. Her wand was raised, and she looked like she'd gone down fighting.  
  
Augusta sat down on a rock, staring at Frank, trying to remember how to breathe.  
  
Lily Potter was dashing through the ruins, searching for whoever had done this, but they were gone, the place was empty except for a dark shadow under the green light of the Dark Mark and --  
  
There was a low, whimpering sound from the heather beside Frank, then a hearty, bellowing cry.  
  
Augusta got to her feet like she was floating through a crystal ball vision.  
  
She looked down.  
  
The baby was in the heather. He was wearing a sleeper and grasping at the flowers. His forehead was covered with blood that had poured from an ugly cut.  
  
"Oh, my God," Lily said, appearing from the shadows. "The baby. He's alive." She raised her wand. Something flew off into the darkness.  
  
A moment later, there were four soft pops.  
  
A young, thin man with dark circles under his eyes -- the Lupin boy, Augusta was fairly certain -- knelt beside the baby and put a hand on his face. He raised a wand and cleared away the blood. "Oh, Neville," he said. "Oh, poor Neville." He reached down to scoop the baby up, then noticed Augusta. "Mrs. Longbottom. I'm so sorry. I… we didn't know… Until we found Peter…" He picked the baby up and handed him to her. "We can check him over in the morning. I don't think it can be…" He looked up, and Augusta followed his gaze. She saw Albus Dumbledore and two other men. One was the elder Black boy. The other was Mad-Eye Moody. Moody immediately set about scouring the garden for clues.  
  
Lupin was looking at Dumbledore. "It wasn't Greyback, was it?" he asked.  
  
"No." Dumbledore came over to Augusta and looked at Neville. "I don't think he brought anyone else with him. Voldemort. He came alone. This was meant to seal his victory. The boy was prophesied to destroy him. And I think he did. I think…" He looked around the garden. "I don't think Voldemort left this place. I think whatever he tried to do to Neville… it bounced back on him."  
  
"How could that happen?"  
  
"I don't know," Dumbledore said. "And tonight isn't a time to speculate on magical theory. Take your grandson home, Augusta." He touched Neville's head. "There will be time to look into it. But take him home now."  
  
Augusta might have protested. She wanted to see to Frank and Alice, and to chase down anyone who had a hand in this.  
  
But she was tired.  
  
And she had a duty. She was not a hothead, and if there was one thing she had learned from Clarence, it was that life had to go on. Even in the face of this. Life was more important than death, and always would be.  
  
She held the baby close to her, then turned his face to see Frank, then Alice. "This was your father," she said, "and that was your mother. Remember, Neville. But I will be both to you now."  
  
She nodded to Dumbledore, and Disapparated, the baby in her arms.  
  
Whatever else would come, his life would go on.  



	2. The Most Helpful Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville and his oldest friend, Harry Potter, go into London with Harry's father to buy supplies for their shared eleventh birthday celebration.

In the ten years since the war ended, the remaining members of the Longbottom family had had cause to be glad that they lived in the countryside.  
  
The celebrations had begun almost immediately, before Frank and Alice were even properly in the ground. The Death Eaters were in disarray, and the Aurors were able to tell that Lord Voldemort had been blasted out of existence when he turned his wand on baby Neville. The country was ecstatic (except for the Death Eaters and their supporters, of course), and they didn't care a bit that one old woman had lost everything except for a small child, who was too young to remember the people he lost.  
  
Gran had been glad to be far removed from the celebrating towns that day. Lily Potter had created a protective barrier around the grounds, and had patrolled it herself to keep the revelers off of the family. The remnants of that protection remained even now, deterring most uninvited wizarding visitors.  
  
There were quite a few.  
  
Neville was, after all, The Boy Who Lived. Gran had put her foot down on merchandising. They'd wanted to make dolls and write biographies. How they imagined they would write a biography of a one year old child was a bit of a mystery.  
  
This didn't stop the adulation. Every time Gran was forced to take Neville out, people pointed and stared and gaped at him. He was asked for his autograph before he knew how to write. People wanted him to do magic, even though he was underage, out of school, and wandless.  
  
The lightning shaped scar on his forehead made him instantly recognizable, and he hated it for that reason. Here, in his garden, he could push his hair back out of his face, but if he went out into the world, he did his best to hide it… which often led to disapproving tuts from Gran, since she told him that he oughtn't be ashamed of who he was, that it was somehow disrespectful to his parents to hide the scar from his infancy.  
  
So their isolation was something of a blessing.  
  
Neville, like his grandfather, preferred puttering in the garden to nearly any other activity -- certainly to being adored by complete strangers -- and his garden was the best one he knew, bursting with healthy plants and buzzing with bees. Frogs croaked in the little pond he'd dredged up, and trees and flowers reached exuberantly to the sky.  
  
This was his great pride, but no one seemed impressed by it. It wasn't what they wanted from the hero of the wizarding world.  
  
They wanted to know how powerful he was, what magic he'd accessed even as a baby that was able to defeat the most terrifying Dark wizard that any of them had ever heard of.  
  
If they could see more of Neville than they did, they would be very disappointed. They'd see the lightning scar on his forehead, and then they'd want him to dazzle them.  
  
He had not, as far as he knew, ever performed even the most rudimentary accidental magic. He knew other children, and he knew that most of them had magical mishaps. His best friend, Harry Potter, used to burst into feathers when they were very small. The Patil girls, who were in Neville's Little Magicians troop, had once actually bound their hands together when they got frightened and ran off holding hands. Even Hannah Abbott, a quiet girl whose father owned a gardening supply shop in Diagon Alley, had made birds appear.  
  
Neville -- the Boy Who Lived, the Boy Who Defeated Voldemort Singlehandedly -- had not so much as made a cup of tea stay hot. He wasn't supposed to hear it, but he knew that the adults sometimes talked after he went to bed. Gran had asked Professor Dumbledore if it was possible that the attack on him had left him a Squib. Dumbledore had said he didn't think so, but had also taken the time to counsel her on what her options were, if it were the case. Neville had listened to this conversation through a heating vent in the floor when he was seven. Gran had never said anything to him directly, but she'd obtained a large number of books on the subject of Squibs, and often assured him that she valued him regardless of his ability to do magic.  
  
It didn't take much deductive skill from there.  
  
And now, he was almost eleven, almost Hogwarts age, and if he turned out not to have magic, what was he going to do? It wasn't like he could handle the classes at Hogwarts if he couldn't use a wand. He was useless. He'd end up in Muggle school for sure.  
  
He sighed and spooned fertilizer -- just a little -- onto a patch of daffodils by the pond. A frog blinked at him calmly from a rock.  
  
Then he felt a rush of air, and a shadow zipped by overhead.  
  
"Neville!" Harry Potter cried from the broomstick. His little gold-rimmed glasses flashed in the sun. "Come on! It's time to go!"  
  
Neville got to his feet. "Go?" He blinked. "What? And is that…?"  
  
"It's mine," Harry said. He flew around the garden in a circle, then did a twisting sort of loop in the air and came down beside Neville, dismounting with a fancy, flourishy step that he must have picked up from his father. "Dad got the new Nimbus, and he said I could have the old one."  
  
"First years can't have broomsticks," Neville said cautiously.  
  
Harry shrugged. "I'm going to try for Quidditch. If you're on the team, you can have a broomstick. Are you going to try?"  
  
Neville laughed. "Me? Harry, come on. I probably won't even _go_ to Hogwarts."  
  
"Don't be stupid," Harry said, frowning. He threw an arm over Neville's shoulders, and led him up the path toward the house. "Dad's in the kitchen," he said. "He left Vi and Pete with Moony. We're going to Diagon Alley to get things for The Birthday."  
  
Harry's and Neville's birthdays were a day apart, and they always celebrated together, alternating whose actual day to use for the party each year. This year, it would be on Harry's birthday on the thirty-first. The celebration was never referred to as either Harry's or Neville's birthday, though. It was just The Birthday, a proper noun that referred to both of them or neither.  
  
Neville wasn't sure he was going to be very celebratory this year. Harry and the rest of their friends would all be talking Hogwarts and Quidditch. Neville would be figuring out Muggle buses, he supposed, and learning to play kickball. Or toeball. Some sort of foot-related ball, anyway.  
  
"You're not still on about being a Squib, are you?" Harry asked. "That's not what all of this moping is about?"  
  
"Well, if I am, then -- "  
  
"You're not!" Harry stopped and shook his head, frustrated. "Look at your garden!"  
  
"That's not magic, it's just growing things."  
  
"I can't grow things. I'll probably fail Herbology. I think you have magic, and all of it goes into the daffodils. That's what Moony says, anyway." He grinned. "Are you coming to London or not?"  
  
"Wait, London's on the table?"  
  
"Didn't I say?"  
  
"You said you and your dad were going."  
  
"Right, to get things for The Birthday. Shouldn't we be part of it? It's our birthday, after all."  
  
He didn't really pause for an answer. He just assumed Neville would be a part of things, because Neville was always a part of things. He'd been Harry's constant companion years longer than Harry's sister and brother (and Harry claimed to prefer him greatly to either of them).  
  
Neville didn't put up an argument.  
  
They went into the kitchen, where Gran had managed to get Harry's dad, James, to sit down for tea. Getting James to sit down was often as difficult as getting Harry to. This wasn't surprising to anyone. The two of them were a lot alike. James just looked like a taller Harry who needed a shave and had different color eyes. Neville had always been a little in awe of him. He ran the Potter household and could do every repair spell and every cleaning spell. And he was a great flyer. Neville had once asked what his job was and he said, "Well, Neville, I am a Gentleman of Leisure." He had pronounced this like it was the greatest job ever. He also coached the Hollow Men, the Godric's Hollow youth Quidditch club. (This annoyed Harry to no end, because James was really careful not to always put Harry "up front," which meant that he often didn't get to be in games even when he really was the best person on the team.) Now that Harry was big enough to look after himself and the littler ones during the days, he'd taken a position as assistant coach for Tutshill, which made him even more amazing, though once Harry was in school, Neville supposed he'd have to give that up.  
  
_You have your own father to idolize_ , Gran said in his head. _He did something more important than flying a broomstick._  
  
Gran made Neville and Harry sit down for biscuits and tea as well, mostly to make them practice their manners, and James seemed to take perverse delight in making extremely dull conversation while he watched Harry squirm, but eventually, it was over. James told Gran how delightful it was, then led the boys to the fireplace. A moment later, they were all spilling out of the public floo in the middle of Diagon Alley.  
  
"I do like your Gran," James said. "She's got a lot of spunk."  
  
Neville smiled, and started combing his fringe forward with his fingers. "Thanks."  
  
James raised his wand. "I'll get that," he offered, then Neville felt his fringe suddenly get thicker and longer.  
  
"Thanks," he said again. "Gran doesn't like it when --"  
  
"We won't tell her," James said. "I don't think she remembers what it's like to be nearly eleven."  
  
"Can we head to Gambol and Japes?" Harry asked.  
  
"Well, I need to pick up food. I was going to Jiggles bakery. The cake?"  
  
"Could we go alone?" Harry asked.  
  
Neville expected a quick refusal, but James just shrugged. "All right. Hands up. Both of you."  
  
Harry raised his hands, putting them palm up. Neville, confused, followed suit.  
  
"Dad's new spell," Harry said. "Longer leash."  
  
James tapped their upraised hands. "That'll start to tingle in forty minutes. That will be your cue to head for the Leaky Cauldron. If you're not there ten minutes after I call  you, you'll find yourself late to a very important date."  
  
"In other words," Harry said, "we'll become rabbits, like in _Alice in Wonderland_."  
  
"And it's very easy to find giant talking rabbits in Diagon Alley," James said. "Go on, now. I'll see you for lunch."  
  
He turned his back without giving them a second look.  
  
"I can't believe he's letting us go alone," Neville said. "Gran would never let me…"  
  
"He was going to ask her inside," Harry told him. "I guess she said it was all right, since here we are. Dad thinks it's good practice for being at school." He led the way down toward Gambol and Japes joke shop. The streets were crowded. Some kids were already shopping at Madam Malkin's, and there was a group oohing and ahhing at Quality Quidditch Supplies. ("The new Nimbus," Harry said. "I'll show you Dad's at the party.") By the time they approached the door, they'd settled into a pleasant conversation about what sorts of things they wanted to have for The Birthday. There were spells and charms you could rent, and Neville was keen to rent one of the enchanted tents, with a circus inside of it.  
  
"I don't know," Harry said. "All the animals are fake. Maybe Moony could bring real animals. He's friends with Professor Kettleburn at the school, and they have unicorns there. A unicorn would be good."  
  
"Nah," Neville said as they passed under the old plane tree. "They don't like to be paraded around. I wanted one for the garden, and Gran gave me the whole song and dance about not treating animals like decorations."  
  
"You have frogs and all the toads!"  
  
"I gave them a place to live, and they came to live in it."  
  
"Oh." Harry shrugged. "Maybe we could do knights again."  
  
"Maybe. But how about --"  
  
"Well, well," a voice said from behind the tree. "Look who it is."  
  
Neville pushed his fringe further down against his scar, hoping against hope that the boy whose voice had appeared would have forgotten him. It worked sometimes. That was why he liked to cover the thing in public -- he looked like a million other boys in England, and sometimes, if he didn't mention his name or show his scar, people never made the connection at all.  
  
No such luck.  
  
Draco Malfoy came around into view. He had white blond hair and pale blue eyes. "It's the chosen one, and his little half-Mudblood servant." He directed this last at Harry with great disdain, then looked at Neville. "Can Mudbloods even _make_ good servants?"  
  
"Harry's my friend," Neville said. "And so is his mother."  
  
"Of course she is." He wrinkled his nose. "You blood traitors are disgusting."  
  
"There are two of us here, Malfoy," Harry said. "And only one of you."  
  
"I see one blood traitor and one _nobody_ who imagines himself to be important."  
  
"Which stacks up pretty well against a fart in the wind like you!" Harry drew back his arm.  
  
That was when the other two boys jumped down from the branches of the tree.  
  
They were both bigger than Draco Malfoy, and considerably bigger than Harry and Neville.  
  
"These are Crabbe and Goyle," Malfoy said. He pointed at Neville. "And _this_ is the Boy Who Lived. Show him proper respect, boys."  
  
"Leave him alone," Harry said.  
  
"Or what?"  
  
Harry didn't answer in words. He ran at the bigger of the two newcomers. This was standard Harry Potter strategy. He always ran in.  
  
It never worked.  
  
The boy caught him mid-stride, laughing, and used his momentum to throw him to the ground. His glasses went flying, then came down to crash on the cobblestones. Harry himself skidded into them, and even from several feet away, Neville heard something crack.  
  
Harry, who was utterly blind without his specs, got up, aiming his fists clumsily at the mountainous boys.  
  
Neville didn't have any choice. He jumped in. He leapt onto Malfoy's back, figuring that, first, he was big enough to take Malfoy, and second, Malfoy was apparently the one giving the orders. "Tell them to back off!" Neville said.  
  
"I don't think so." Malfoy slammed himself backward, shoving Neville into the tree and shaking him free. He took a few steps forward without looking back.  
  
Then the extraordinary thing happened.  
  
From the wide-spaced branches of the plane tree, long green vines dropped down, writhing like snakes. One grabbed Malfoy and yanked him up off his feet. Two more grabbed the others, Crabbe and Goyle, bringing them up until they were hanging by their ankles from the high branches.  
  
Neville stared at the scene, jaw hanging down.  
  
"How did you do that?" Malfoy demanded. "How did you do that, Potter?"  
  
Harry felt around on the street until he found his glasses, then got up and shrugged. "Not me," he said. " _That's_ what happens when you tickle the sleeping dragon." He grinned at Neville, who had no idea what he was talking about. "Serves you right. He beat Voldemort. Did you think he was going to have trouble with you?"  
  
The door of Gambol and Japes opened, and the wiry little man who ran the place came out.  
  
"What's the matter with you boys?" Mr. Gambol asked. "No one fights by my shop! This is a place for fun, not…" He looked at the boys in the tree. "Not whatever _that_ is." He made a quick slicing motion with his wand, and all three boys fell down onto cushions he quickly Conjured. "All of you get out of here. You can't come in today."  
  
Malfoy and his friends darted off toward Knockturn Alley.  
  
"Thanks," Harry said. "We thought they'd never go."  
  
"I mean you, too, Mr. Potter," Gambol said. "I swear, you can make anything into trouble."  
  
Harry squinted at him. "We didn't start this!"  
  
"I don't care." Gambol stormed back into his shop.  
  
"Well, that's hardly fair," Harry said.  
  
"He doesn’t like fighting," Neville said. "Come on. We can do something else until it's time to meet your dad."  
  
Harry sighed and looked down at his glasses. "No. We better find him now. Or, you know, _you'd_ better. I can't see him." He shook his head. "First thing at Hogwarts, I'm going to learn how to fix my own glasses." He put his hand on Neville's shoulder. "Onward, Guide! You'll need to be my eyes now."  
  
They found James ten minutes later, still in line at the bakery. He raised his eyebrows.  
  
"You didn't buy anything?" he asked.  
  
"Got in a fight," Harry said, and held up his glasses.  
  
"A what?"  
  
Neville explained the situation, figuring that Harry would try to embellish it. "And so, we couldn't go in," he finished. "Just… had to find you."  
  
"Neville skipped the part where he made a tree attack them," Harry said.  
  
"I didn't. That was the tree."  
  
"Yes. Plane trees are known for that." Harry grinned. "Told you you'd be coming to Hogwarts." He held out his specs. "Dad… my glasses?"  
  
James took the glasses and tapped them with his wand lazily. It was a spell he'd obviously done hundreds of times. "And it was the Malfoy boy? He was actually going on -- in public -- about your mother's blood status."  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
James made a kind of harsh, hissing sound, then said, "Harry, don't get into fights. Neville, you either. There ends your lecture."  
  
They reached the counter, and the woman behind it handed James a large box, for which he traded a handful of coins. He peeked under it, then did a quick spell. It disappeared.  
  
Harry frowned. "Why not just have it delivered? Don't they do that?"  
  
"In houses a bit less secure than ours," James said. "I don't let anything in until I've checked it."  
  
"Isn't the war over?" Neville asked. "I mean, isn't that why…?" He touched his fringe, over the scar.  
  
"If Lucius Malfoy's son is directing Crabbe's and Goyle's sons to attack people on the basis of blood status, I'd have to say _not_ ," James said, with uncharacteristic gravity. Then he forced his face into a grin. "Come on. Let's grab lunch. Sirius is going to join us at the Leaky Cauldron."  
  
Harry let out an unfeigned cheer. Sirius Black was his godfather, his idol, and his absolute favorite human being. Neville himself admired Sirius, but the man made him nervous. He was…  
  
Well, he was Sirius Black. He'd won a seat on the Wizengamot by promising voters that he would make meetings more amusing, and he'd kept the promise for five years now. He was manic and loud and wasn't always careful about how he treated people.  
  
But Neville didn't complain. At the very least, lunch ought to be interesting.  
  
The three of them wound through the streets of Diagon Alley until they came to the archway that led to the Leaky Cauldron.  
  
It didn't take long to figure out where Sirius Black was. Neville couldn't see the man himself, but there was a knot of witches and wizards in the back, many of them laughing uproariously. From inside it, he could hear the quick, sharp voice of Harry's godfather. James rolled his eyes and put his hands on the boys' shoulders to lead them through the crowd.  
  
"…and so I said, 'Dolores, if you ban every ghoul in England, how will you ever find another date?' and she said…" The crowd parted and Sirius broke off the story, laughing. "James! You're early. And Harry and Neville!"  
  
Neville's heart sank. The crowd turned away from Sirius and stared at him, peering intently at his face, at the magically thickened fringe. He heard them whispering.  
  
"Neville --?"  
  
"Longbottom?"  
  
"The boy who --"  
  
"He who must not -- "  
  
"-- really him?"  
  
"-- doesn't look like much -- "  
  
Sirius winced, but didn't call any more attention to Neville by apologizing. He just cleared a path to the table and directed Neville to the inside, near the wall. While they settled in, he closed off his various conversations and shooed people politely away. When they were gone, he did a quick spell of some kind.  
  
"What does that do?" Harry asked.  
  
"Just a minor distraction spell. We'll have to call the server now, or she'll forget we exist, just like the rest of the room." He smiled. "So, what are we doing for The Birthday?"  
  
"Oh, I thought we'd skip it," James said. "They're outgrowing it."  
  
"We are not," Harry said. "Same as always. What happened in the Wizengamot today?"  
  
Sirius shrugged. "Not much. Boring stuff. There's a debate about returning things we got during the Empire."  
  
"Things like what?" Neville asked.  
  
"Oh, artifacts. Ghosts. A few gardens, unplottable places… it's dull. And we should repatriate it to whatever countries it came from." He considered this. "Except for ghosts. We should ask the ghosts where they want to be."  
  
"Are you going to play a joke soon?" Harry asked, bored.  
  
"I'm thinking about it. What do you think, James? Could I keep them tied up for a week debating whether or not to pardon Darth Vader?"  
  
"Who's that?" Neville asked.  
  
"A character in a Muggle film," James said. "It'll take them _six_ weeks before anyone admits that no one knows who they're debating about."  
  
"That's what I'm thinking," Sirius said. "He's got the mask, he's got the black robes. If I just say that he did end up dying to save Luke, they'll all pretend that they know who Luke was -- just like they all pretended to know who Peter was -- and what Vader did, and they'll all have strong opinions on the matter of his stay in Azkaban. I'll tell the truth as soon as it hits the _Prophet_." He smiled. "Or maybe I'll just hex everyone's hats to start switching heads in the middle of the next debate. That would keep my campaign promise, too."  
  
Neville imagined all the dignified witches and wizards on the Wizengamot chasing their fancy hats around the Department of Mysteries while Sirius Black sat back in his chair, laughing and laughing. It was funny, but also disquieting. Neville, as far as he could tell, had no more sense of humor than he did magical talent, and the manic energy of Harry's dad and his friends -- and of Harry himself, to be honest -- sometimes scared him a little, though he would never admit this. It was just a little bit too _wild_ , like, at any minute, they'd turn into howler monkeys and chase him around. (And yes, he was afraid of howler monkeys. He supposed that his parents would be very disappointed. They'd gone head to head with Lord Voldemort to save his life, and he got nervous about primates in the Muggle zoo.)  
  
"I like the hats," James said. "Funnier visuals, and it'll waste less time."  
  
Sirius rolled his eyes. "You're getting responsible in your old age."  
  
"Almost respectable," James agreed. "Also, Lily wants the Wizengamot to get to the Unplottables. The Aurors in general do."  
  
"I know," Sirius said. "I hear about it every day. Then half the time, I go over to 'Dromeda's place for supper, and Dora's talking about it. All right, then, it'll be hats."  
  
They continued in this vein for a while whilst they ate their lunches. Neville couldn't think of anything good to contribute, so he stayed quiet. Harry didn't push him, but always made sure to include him when he was looking around. It was an old routine, and Neville was comfortable with it.  
  
It wasn't until after pudding that Sirius asked, out of nowhere, "So, when are we all wand-shopping?"  
  
"On my birthday," Harry said. "Neville will get his Hogwarts letter the day before I do -- "  
  
"Sometimes, they send them early," James said.  
  
"Only if they think there will be trouble getting through," Sirius pointed out. "Moony's in charge of the early letters. Mostly Muggle-borns. People whose parents need a little explaining. That does not include Harry and Neville. They should get theirs for their birthdays."  
  
"I probably won't," Neville muttered.  
  
"Ha!" Harry shook his head. "Neville can control trees. He's way more magical than me."  
  
Neville didn't say anything. He knew it wasn't true, even if he did have _some_ magic.  
  
"Well," Sirius said, "don't fuss too much about Ollivander's sermons about wands choosing wizards. I broke four wands during the war, and it was never any different when I got a new one."  
  
James snorted. "Except when you couldn't do a simple Accio with that ash wand. Or transfigure anything with the chestnut wand."  
  
"Not true."  
  
"True." James looked at Neville and Harry. "Sirius doesn’t like mysticism. But you notice he's carrying Phineas Nigellus's wand these days."  
  
"I like the style," Sirius said, holding up his wand and admiring himself in the shiny black surface.  
  
Neville knew almost nothing about the subject. Gran had told him that she wished he could have had his father's wand, but it had been destroyed in the attack, as had his mother's. Uncle Algie's had not been particularly powerful. Gran, like Sirius, did not believe Ollivander's maxim about new wands for every wizard. ("It's a bit of a convenient philosophy, for a wand salesman," she'd once sniffed disdainfully.)  
  
When no one had anything to say to this, Sirius pulled on his fine cloak. "So," he said, "what _are_ we to do for the great occasion, if you weren't able to get into Gambol and Japes?"  
  
"We've still got a few days," Harry said. "We can still get in."  
  
"Only if you don't mind your brother and sister along," James said. "Moony's getting ready for the school year, too, and your mum already pulled strings to get The Birthday off in the middle of a case."  
  
Harry made a face, but shrugged and said, "Fine."  
  
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "What've they got Lily working on, anyway? Dora's always in a rush when I see her at Ted and Andromeda's."  
  
"Who's Dora?" Neville asked.  
  
"My cousin. My cousin's daughter, actually." Sirius thought about it. "Which is still my cousin… somehow."  
  
"Once removed," Neville offered.  
  
"I never remember that." Sirius shook his head. "Anyway, what are they doing? I'm starting to think Lily's taking advantage of an impressionable apprentice."  
  
"Of course she is. She's not stupid." James grinned, then shrugged. "She can't tell me all of it. Someone attacked old Flamel last month. Tried to steal the secret of his youth and beauty."  
  
Sirius frowned, looking graver than Neville would think normal for this. "Flamel… are we talking about Dumbledore's friend?"  
  
James nodded. "The… it's been put somewhere safe, but there's a lot of scrambling going on. And Lily says a good bit of paranoia."  
  
"What else is new in the Ministry?" Sirius grumbled, but didn't comment further. He forced a smile, then said, "At any rate, I'd best get back to the salt mines. Actually, I'd prefer salt mines. As it is, I have to go back and argue more with Dolores Umbridge about the merpeople. She's still looking for a back door to bar all 'semi-humans' from Hogwarts."  
  
James didn't say anything to this, though his expression didn't leave much to the imagination. Harry was also fuming.  
  
It took Neville a minute to figure it out. He'd always known the Potters and their friends. He and Harry had spent the last war crawling around the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix together, knocking over potions and cauldrons if the photos were to be believed. But Gran hadn't been involved in their biggest fight _after_ the war, and because of that, Neville didn't automatically think of it. As far as he was concerned, Professor Remus Lupin, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, was just Remus, or, as Harry and his family called him, "Moony." Neville knew in a vague way that he was a werewolf. It had been splashed all over the news four years ago, when Dumbledore had hired him. Neville didn't remember much of it, only that there was a new potion, and there had been arguments in front of the Wizengamot, and that ultimately, he'd been allowed to stay at Hogwarts. He had given lessons to both Harry and Neville when they were young (Latin and history; Gran had taught them maths and reading), and the werewolf issue had just never seemed to come up. Apparently, for some people, it was a going concern, and barring "semi-humans" from  Hogwarts was another shot in the war against Lupin, at least as far as James Potter and Sirius Black were concerned.  
  
This had never occurred to Neville at all.  
  
They said goodbye to Sirius, who pretended that he needed to be dragged out, even conjuring little chains around his wrists that rattled ahead of him as he went back to the Department of Mysteries.  
  
James sighed. "Well, I'd best get the cake home. Neville, do you want to come by? Your grandmother told me you could stay for supper if you liked. We'd love to have you."  
  
"We could play Quidditch," Harry suggested. "You can use my broom, and I'll borrow Dad's new one."  
  
"Ha," James said. "We'll give Neville your mum's old broom and then I'll take on the pair of you."  
  
Neville gave a hopeless groan.  
  
Harry sighed melodramatically and shook his head. "Maybe you should teach Neville to fly first."  



	3. Family Affairs

They Flooed back to the Potters' cottage at Godric's Hollow. There was a cheerful arbor out front, overgrown with ivy (it really needed to be pruned, but Neville let it be, since it wasn't his garden). A hand-painted sign identified the place as "The Crow's Nest," the latest in a series of names that, in Neville's memory, had included "The Stag's Brace," "The Lilypad," "The Harry Eyeball," "Violet Patch," "Pete's Pitch," and many others.  Once, Harry had even tried to give it a name related to Neville's scar ("The Lightning Bolt!" he'd insisted. "It has to be!"), but Neville had talked him out of it.  
  
James stopped to look at the sign. "Huh. That's new. Sounds like Moony."  
  
"I like it," Harry said. "It's a pirate thing, right?"  
  
"Marauder," James said, and smiled.  
  
"What's a marauder?" Harry asked.  
  
"You'll find out when I give you your birthday present," James said, and would say no more, though Harry begged quite unreasonably.  
  
They went into the back garden, which had been growing for years inside its charmed walls, and was now almost as big as a Quidditch practice pitch. Lupin had rigged up some kind of pirate game. Violet Potter, seven years old, was wearing an eyepatch and swinging as high as she could while standing on a garden swing. Her long, messy black hair streamed out behind her. She'd made a crown of the bluebells that grew in great profusion in the garden, and it looked like bits of day sky strewn into the black of midnight. Four-year-old Pete Potter (never called "Peter Potter" because, as Harry never failed to point out, that sounded ridiculous) was on top of some sort of Conjured fort with a slide coming down from it. He had a dull plastic sword in one hand and a toy wand in the other. A patterned scarf was tied over his head, so his bright red hair stuck out in tufts underneath it.  
  
He raised the toy wand as soon as he saw them and yelled, "Accio Neville!"  
  
Then, fearlessly, he jumped from the top of the fort, flinging himself out.  
  
Neville ran forward, begging himself not to trip as he did so, and stuck out his arms.  
  
Pete struck him with less force than he expected, and Neville guessed that either James or Lupin had controlled his flight through the air. It was still a pretty solid hit, and it knocked Neville backward to the ground. Pete sat on his chest and said, "Got you!"  
  
Harry hauled him up and said, "Don't jump on my friends, Pete."  
  
Pete stuck his tongue out.  
  
Harry stuck his back.  
  
A minute later, Vi vaulted herself off the top of the swing's arc and came flying through the air. This time Neville saw James aim his wand at her and guide her to the ground. "Honestly," he said to Lupin, picking her up and throwing her on his back. "I have no idea where my children get this endless need to go flying through the air."  
  
"Must be from Lily," Lupin said, then thought about it. "Actually, I think that _was_ from Lily. Didn't she say she used to do that?"  
  
James straightened Vi's bluebell crown and kissed her nose. "They all come by it honestly enough from either of us."  
  
"So, shouldn't we share our habits with Neville?" Harry suggested, and from that moment, the afternoon became a flying lesson.  
  
James Potter had a full collection of brooms, and he put them up in order of how fast and how safe they were. Neville was one step slower and safer than Pete at the beginning. James and Harry spent a lot of time demonstrating, but Neville didn't get anything out of it until Lupin called him down and explained -- "in actual _words_ ," as he said to James, frustrated -- what they were doing and how it was supposed to work.  
  
Nothing really made Neville into a good flyer, but he did graduate to the broom Vi started the afternoon with, one that James said would have made a respectable school broom.  
  
Vi herself had made the transition to a higher level, but it was only one above Neville's. She sat on it cheerfully, making it swing back and forth like a pendulum. Her flower crown was falling off again, and Neville reached across to straighten it. More bluebells seemed to open when he arranged it, but that was probably just a question of them coming out from under her hair. The plants were dead, after all; it wasn't like they were going to keep growing.  
  
Vi blushed very red, then flew her broomstick away.  
  
Neville frowned, then looked over his shoulder, where James and Lupin were laughing. Harry put a finger down his throat and feigned gagging.  
  
Neville let his broomstick sink to the ground. It was getting late, anyway, and it was time to start helping James Potter make supper. Lily arrived just as it was being served, and James played at being her house elf, earning himself a scowl and an eyeroll, followed by an affectionate tousling of his hair.  Harry made fake gagging noises, but Neville watched the interplay with an emotion he couldn't quite name.  He wondered if his own parents would have been like this, or if they would have greeted one another differently after a day apart.   
  
Of course, they'd _both_ been Aurors, so maybe they would have come home together, and the greetings would all have been for Neville, the way Lily was when she moved on from James and gave Violet a kiss, then picked up Pete and cuddled him.  Harry and Neville were already sitting down, so she settled for giving each of them a kiss on the head.  Harry faked a long-suffering look at this, so she pinched his nose and said, "Oo, who's Mummy's ickle Harrykins?"  
  
"Dad," Harry said with faux horror, "I think Aunt Petunia got some Polyjuice Potion!"  
  
Lily, her eyes twinkling, doubled  her effort, pinching Harry's cheek and cooing, "Oh, you are just the most wonderful boy!  Darling Harrykins!"  She kissed him loudly on the cheek, repeatedly, until he collapsed down from his chair, laughing himself red in the face.  
  
"Petunia really is like that with Dudley," Lupin told Neville quietly, sitting down beside him.  "It's… revolting."  He grinned.  
  
Neville agreed wholeheartedly.  
  
Lily picked up the cauldron of stew and served herself some, taking a slice of bread from a board James Levitated over to the table.  "This smells delicious!" she said in her normal voice.  "And I'm starving."  
  
"Did you catch any bad people, Mummy?" Vi asked as the stew went around.  
  
"Not today."  Lily waited exactly as long as it took for everyone to have stew in a bowl (Harry's might actually still have been falling from the ladle), then dug in.  As soon as she swallowed the first bite, she said, "Tonks and I went up to Azkaban for… yearly visits.  Did you know that she's quite a good flyer?"  
  
"She was never on her house team," James said, looking surprised.  
  
"Not everyone is Quidditch-mad," Lupin said. "Dora likes racing."  
  
"What color was her hair?" Violet asked.  "She said she would make it black like mine someday!"  
  
"It wasn't today."  Lily smiled.  "Today, it was bright yellow.  She said it would make Azkaban more cheerful!"  
  
Neville wondered why Aurors were making yearly visits to Azkaban, and what they hoped to find, but the conversation didn't go in that direction.  Lily just told stories about her apprentice's silly hair colors, and how they shocked the more straight-laced Ministry workers.  This turned into a general abuse of the Ministry, and speculations on what Sirius's next prank might be at the Wizengamot.  Once or twice, Neville considered just asking why they went to Azkaban, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, as no one else seemed interested.  
  
It was eight o'clock when he Flooed home to find Gran sitting beside the fireplace, doing needlework.  "I spoke to Mr. Gambol," she said.  "He told me you had been fighting outside the joke shop."  
  
"Er…"  
  
"And that you did magic."  
  
"I don't think I did…"  
  
"And that one of the boys was the Malfoy boy."  
  
"He insulted Harry's mum!"  
  
Gran nodded and did a few more stitches.  "Have some pudding," she said.  
  
"I had some at the Potters'."  
  
She smiled faintly.  "Have a bit more.  Apple tart."  
  
Neville nodded, and went to the kitchen.   
  
That night, he had a brief but very vivid dream. In it, he and his parents were living in the garden where they had died. Mum was baking a cake and Dad was tilling a patch of oats. Neville was helping him, and Dad kept saying how Neville had power to make things grow.  
  
Around the garden were tall apple trees -- which _weren't_ in the real garden; Neville had insisted on visiting it last year, and he knew -- and gold fruit hung from the boughs. There was a bright green snake in the tree, like in the story of the Garden of Eden, but no one mentioned it.  
  
An owl flew in, a letter clasped in its talons, and Dad said, "Oh, look, here it finally is! Your Hogwarts letter."  
  
It was in Neville's hand an instant later (even though the owl had been a good way off), only it wasn't from Hogwarts. It was a Howler, and his name was written on it in blood. Neville looked up, and saw both of his parents in front of him, sliced open, and he knew whose blood it was. The Howler opened up and screamed, "UNWORTHY! UNWORTHY! UNWORTHY!"  
  
He didn't go back to sleep.  
  
When he went downstairs an hour later, there was a perfectly normal owl waiting at the window, with a perfectly normal letter in green ink, containing a perfectly normal message inviting Neville to Hogwarts.  
  
Gran, who was always up and about a the break of dawn, took a quick look at it and said, "You see, Neville? There was nothing to worry about. Now, shall we get you prepared?"  
  
"Well, I was thinking of going wand-shopping with Harry. And books, probably."  
  
"Yes, yes. But you need more than a wand. Let's get you decent robes and parchment and the other things that you and Mr. Potter will have no need to confer about." She rolled her eyes fondly. "And I believe, for your birthday, that we should equip you handsomely for Herbology." She smiled.  
  
Neville smiled back. Harry was impressed with his skill for gardening, but took no interest in the subject for himself. It would be better not to try and share that shopping.  
  
After breakfast, Gran took him by Side-Along Apparition to Diagon Alley. She was not a terribly demonstrative woman, but Neville understood her mode of affection, which today consisted of piling him up with all of the little things he would need. There were standard issue school robes, rolls and rolls of parchment, decent quills, an ink bottle charmed to purchase ink and refill itself magically, a small cauldron, and other little things. All of this, she wrapped into a bundle and sent home magically.  
  
"Now," she said, "I believe it's time to introduce you to your grandfather's favorite shop."  
  
Neville felt a dazed grin come up on his face. "Newland Nursery?" he asked. "The one in Whitechapel?"  
  
Gran pursed her lips and nodded. "Be careful. It's not a good Muggle neighborhood, as I understand it, but the shop's been there for a very long time." She stood back and inspected him, then poked her wand at him. He felt a tingling sensation, then looked down at himself and gasped. She'd put him in a beaten up pair of Muggle blue jeans and an old, oversized tee shirt. He touched his head, and found that his hair was in a kind of spiky style.  
  
She nodded, then turned her wand on herself. Her finicky old robes turned into a brown dress with a red tweed jacket over it. The fox fur she usually wore around her neck turned into a moth-eaten scarf. Her witch's hat turned into another scarf, this one wrapped around her head to hide her hair.  
  
Neville had never seen Gran in Muggle clothes, and until this moment, would not have credited the idea that she knew about them. But she looked perfectly passable, if possibly a bit eccentric.  
  
"There's no handy Apparition point," she explained. "And there's no Floo point. It's their point of pride to blend in. We'll have to take the tube."  
  
This required an exchange of wizarding money, and the utterly exotic experience of going into an underground station, where a smelly train awaited them. It took a bit over fifteen minutes of rocking back and forth, and then they came to another station -- dirty and busy, but that was all right. Gran actually seemed to know her way around it very well.  
  
"Where do you think I found your plants?" she asked impatiently, leading him through the gates and up onto the street. Neville could see a crowded neighborhood, apparently under construction. Across from the station was a squat and ugly little brick sports center, and Gran crossed the street in front of it, turning left toward a block of flats with sand-colored brick walls and red doors. Corrugated metal doors rolled down here and there, covered with graffiti. Gran led him past these at a quick pace, not looking at much. They turned up Castlemain toward Vallance Gardens, which looked rather sad to Neville. As Gran marched him past, among the tall buildings, he imagined himself coming in and making the place much better. Perhaps a little pond, maybe a fountain in the middle of it, a birdbath… things that would make the whole neighborhood feel more… cared for. That was what he was thinking of. Cared for.  
  
They drew to a stop at a corner, waiting to cross a street near the garden. A family was milling nearby -- a middle-aged woman with what Neville first took for her three children. The woman had a kind of vacant look on her face, but she was quite beautiful. She wore a bell-sleeved dress and had long, luxuriant hair not unlike Vi Potter's. There was a girl a year or two older than Neville himself was, with blond hair and a round face rather like his. Then there was a teenaged boy, a huge kid with curly black hair. He stared resentfully at an older boy who looked like he had been doing something very wrong. Then the mother kissed the oldest boy in a way that was very unmaternal.  
  
Gran sniffed.  
  
The young man looked at her and made a disdainful face, then stepped toward her aggressively. "What's your problem?" he asked. "Ugly old cow --"  
  
The hulking teenage boy shoved him out of the way. "Leave the lady alone, Whittaker."  
  
"Or what?"  
  
The woman airily said, "Boys…"  
  
Then the light changed, and Gran and Neville got separated from the strange little family. The girl peeked back once over her shoulder, looking both apologetic and deeply jealous.  
  
"Poor thing," Gran said, then swept Neville around a corner. By now, he was entirely lost. They went past several buildings, then into a back alley that seemed to end at a brick wall behind a stinking wheelie bin. Gran tapped the wheelie bin three times with her wand.  
  
It slid aside and revealed an unremarkable bit of alley. Gran led him into it and tapped the wall with her wand as the wheelie bin went back into place.  
  
The bricks scraped against one another, and Neville forgot that he was lost, that he was in an alley hidden behind rubbish. The wall opened into an arch, and through it was a long, fragrant greenhouse, filled with the growing smells of everything he could think of. Flowers of red and blue and purple spilled from trays on long tables, and vines crept up the walls. Boxes of tools lined the aisles, and, in a small, walled off room, Neville could see a sign that said, "Expert herbologists only, no browsing."  
  
From this room, a witch emerged, her flyaway brown hair making a halo around her head.  
  
"Augusta!" she called, running up to Gran. "Oh, dear, but it's been a long while. Is this…" She looked at Neville, her eyes eagerly searching his forehead.  
  
"This is my grandson. Neville, this is the proprietor of Newland Nurseries, Winifred Wilkes. We'll need to set Neville up for Hogwarts. Let's do it properly."  
  
"Hogwarts!" Winifred said. "Oh, how lovely. I may even be there myself this year."  
  
"Why on Earth would you be at Hogwarts?" Gran asked.  
  
"Oh, helping Rubeus Hagrid -- he's the Keeper of the Grounds -- "  
  
"I know Hagrid well, Winifred."  
  
"Oh, yes, of course, you'd have known him during the war. At any rate, they're doing work on the grounds this year, and he may need some assistance." She looked at Neville. "Now… let's get everything you might need."  
  
So Neville spent a very pleasant afternoon. He got his dragon-hide gloves for Hogwarts, along with a fine set of pruning shears, a watering can that (like his ink bottle) would keep itself full, a trowel and spade, and other lovely tools. Gran also got him a moly and some leaping toadstools that she thought would amuse other boys. Neville was keen to try a bonsai version of an alihotsy tree, whose leaves could cause uncontrollable laughter if chewed. She said she would think about it for Christmas, but that bonsai trees might not survive life in a dormitory very well. Winifred asked if he might like a toad, like his Uncle Algie used to keep, but Neville declined. He felt toads belonged outside, not in. Besides, he was holding out hope for an owl.  
  
Winifred totaled up the purchase, and Neville gulped at the sum, but Gran paid it as if it were only what she had expected to spend. Again, she sent things home magically.  
  
"Do you like gardening?" Winifred asked as she completed the transaction.  
  
"It's my hobby," Neville told her.  
  
"A fine one."  
  
He nodded. "You should plant things outside. Muggle plants, of course. Just to liven up the neighborhood a bit. I think it would make people feel better."  
  
Winifred wrinkled her nose in an expression of unmistakable distaste for some reason, then said, "Oh, it can't be done. This is London. You can't do anything without a whole sheaf of Muggle permits, and half the time around here, it would be torn up anyway. It wouldn't be a good life for the plants."  
  
"Oh. I didn't think of that."  
  
"Yes, well, you live in the country, far away from Muggles. It's a blessing."  
  
Gran gave her a cold look.  
  
"I mean," Winifred said, "to not have to deal with hiding all the time. That's all I mean."  
  
"I should hope so," Gran said.  
  
"I never shared my brother's politics," Winifred said, drawing herself up. "If that will be all today, Mrs. Longbottom?"  
  
Neville didn't fail to note the change from "Augusta" to "Mrs. Longbottom." He wondered what story was there, but decided it wouldn't be wise to ask.  
  
They left Newland Nurseries in the late afternoon and went back out onto the street. He could hear fighting in some of the flats, and once, he thought he saw the big boy and the round-faced girl from earlier stalking through the streets, away from their mother and the young man. Neville wished briefly that he could give them a bonsai alihotsy. They looked like they could do with a laugh.  
  
Then they were back on the train, then they were in Diagon Alley and Flooing home.  
  
The Potters joined them for Neville's birthday dinner, and Harry crowed over Neville's Hogwarts letter. ("Told you so, you git! Of course you're a wizard!") They made arrangements to meet for the rest of the shopping tomorrow, before The Birthday.  
  
Neville Flooed to the Potters the next day, with a heavy purse from Gran in his pocket. Lily had taken the day off, and she was in the kitchen, scrambling eggs and humming to herself. Her long red hair was drawn back in a ponytail, and she fed Neville without even waiting to ask if he wanted any breakfast. She seemed to be in a fabulously good mood. James came in a few minutes later. He'd been outside flying, and also seemed in a good humor. Harry had a pile of presents to open, and he went to it with gusto. They were all piled up on a fine wooden school trunk (Neville himself would be settling for Gran's old trunk, since she wanted him to have at least _some_ family memento). He had most of the same mundane school supplies that Neville had got yesterday, plus a broom care kit, a Gryffindor scarf (everyone seemed to just make the assumption that he'd be a Gryffindor, though Lily joked that, if he got sorted into Slytherin, she would see to it that James transfigured the scarf himself), a set of Tutshill Quidditch banners, and a little plastic box that he looked at oddly.  
  
"It's a Muggle electronic game," Lily told him, shaking her head. "I told Aunt Tuney that it wouldn't work in the house. We'll go to the Muggle park tomorrow to try it. She says Dudley loves his."  
  
Harry twisted up his face at the little box.  
  
Lily sighed. "Just because your cousin likes a thing doesn't mean it's not fun, Harry. You need to stop being… well, just stop. He is your cousin."  
  
Neville had met Harry's Muggle cousin a total of once, for about forty-five minutes one Christmas. In that time, he'd been called names, held down in a wrestling hold, and threatened with a beating. It was enough exposure for a lifetime.  
  
Notably, James didn't step in to support Lily's exhortation.  
  
The whole family left together after breakfast. Vi insisted on holding Neville's hand as they walked through Diagon Alley, which made James and Lily laugh. Lily carried Pete on one hip, even though he seemed a bit big for it.  
  
They went first for Potions supplies, which Lily chose for them with a quick hand, then on to Flourish and Blotts for books. The school books were placed on easy display, and they each got a stack of first year titles. A family full of redheads were gathered around the used book table. It took Neville a minute to recognize them. He didn't get out as much as the Potters did, and he'd only met them a few times at Ministry functions. Harry, on the other hand, seemed to recognize them immediately, and was glad to see them. He pointed them out to his mother.  
  
"Oh, it's the Weasleys," Lily said. "They haven't answered yet about The Birthday." She looked at Neville and Harry. "Ron Weasley will be in your year, Neville. I thought it might be fun for all of you to get to know each other better."  
  
"All right," Harry said. "Will Charlie be there, too?"  
  
"I don't know if anyone will be," Lily said. "Remember? I haven't heard." She pinched his nose and rolled her eyes at him, then went over to the Weasley family.  
  
"Molly!" she called.  
  
The mother of the large family looked up with a smile, then blushed and moved to hide the sign that said "Discount." "Lily," she said. "How good to see you. Hi, Petey!"  
  
Pete smiled at her around the thumb he was sucking.  
  
"I hadn't heard from you yet," Lily said, pulling Pete's thumb from his mouth with some embarrassment. "Any chance that you can make it tonight…?"  
  
The women went on talking -- Neville thought they switched to the subject of potions to discourage thumb-sucking -- and the youngest of the boys in the group peeked around his mother and came out. "Er… hi," he said. His eyes flashed to Neville's forehead, then over at Harry. "I want to come tonight."  
  
"Great!" Harry said enthusiastically. "Do you fly? We have extra brooms, and I bet we could get a good game going."  
  
"Oh, yeah," Ron Weasley said. "If we come… My brothers are beaters, and Ginny's not a half-bad flyer."  
  
The only girl in the brood waved over at them and said, "Hi, Harry!"  
  
He waved back.  
  
"What about Charlie? Wasn't he going to play for England?" Harry asked.  
  
"They asked," Ron told him. "But he wanted to play with dragons instead. He's in Romania."  
  
"Oh, well."  Harry looked bemused at this information, and Neville knew it was because he couldn't imagine not playing Quidditch, if it was an option.  
  
Vi tugged at Neville's hand and brought him over to Ginny Weasley, looking at her with great admiration. "Hi," she said.  
  
Ginny bent over and smiled brightly. "Hello, Violet. Have you been breaking lots of flying rules lately?"  
  
" _All_ of them," Vi said. "Will you play with me if you come tonight?"  
  
"Of course I will. Sisters who only have brothers have to stick together!" She held up her hand, and Vi slapped it playfully, letting go of Neville's hand to do so. He took the opportunity to wipe it off, as it had got quite sweaty.  
  
"Are you going to Ollivander's?" Harry asked Ron. "We're headed there next."  
  
"Er…" Ron blushed. "I, er… well, Charlie gave me his old wand."  
  
Neville noticed the way Ron kept looking away, backing up against the used books, hiding a bag from a used robe shop.  
  
He stepped in. "I'm jealous," he said. "I wish _I_ had a family wand. Gran tried to find me one, but it didn't work out."  
  
Ron smiled faintly, knowing that he was being offered a way out. He nodded.  
  
Harry gave up the line of questioning. They fell into a short conversation about Quidditch -- Ron's older twin brothers joining in -- then Mrs. Weasley gathered her brood for their last stop, and Neville and the Potters went on to Ollivander's.  
  
Neville had never had cause to be in this particular shop before. He wasn't old enough to carry a wand himself and Gran was perfectly satisfied with the one she'd been using since _she_ was eleven. It was a dusty, old-fashioned sort of place, with a wand on a velvet pillow in the front window. An old man appeared from the shadows.  
  
"Ah," he said, his voice low and strange. "The Potters. Let's have it, Lily Evans."  
  
Lily shook her head and held out her wand. "Still the same. Willow and --"  
  
"Unicorn tail hair. I remember." The old man looked at James. "And James Potter. Mahogany and phoenix feather. Do you still have it?"  
  
"Never leave home without it." James looked around. "Harry and Neville are both here for their school wands, Mr. Ollivander."  
  
"Of course." Mr. Ollivander switched his wand, and boxes started to come flying out and piling themselves up around Harry.  
  
Pete tried to catch the boxes as they flew, and Harry, exasperated, kept taking them away and saying, "Petey, be good, all right?"  
  
"Master Potter, start looking," Mr. Ollivander said. He turned to Neville with deep interest and lifted his fringe. "Ah. Mr. Longbottom. I remember your parents very well. Alice -- ash with dragon heartstring. A brave wand for a brave girl. But you…" He looked at the scar. "I wonder…"  
  
James put a hand on Ollivander's wrist, pulling his hand away from Neville's face. His usual good humor was absent. "Neville is a first year Hogwarts student, not a magical experiment to observe."  
  
"Yes, yes, of course," Ollivander said, giving James a look of great annoyance. "But the wand chooses the wizard, and its choice may well take into consideration… well, _all_ first years are, in my business, a matter of magical experimentation."  
  
With this, he deliberately turned his attention to Harry, who was enthusiastically trying wand after wand as measuring devices snaked over him.  
  
Neville was happy to wait while Harry worked. His results were mixed. Some wands did nothing at all. Others seemed to have utterly unintended consequences. Once, he swelled up Mr. Ollivander's nose, which caused the old man to take the wand away very quickly. Finally, he tried a willow wand like his mother's, with a core of dragon heartstring, like his father's. This wasn't a new combination. He'd tried several variants of both, with various lengths and degrees of limberness. But when he took this one, he smiled brightly, and when he brought it down, it let out a spray of sparks.  
  
"Very good," Mr. Ollivander said, then turned to Neville. "Now, Mr. Longbottom, I've been thinking carefully about you." He pointed his wand at the shelves, and a single box came flying out from the back. He caught it easily. "Give this a try."  
  
He handed Neville the pale colored wand inside, and Neville took it.  
  
There was no experimentation. The wand became warm in his hand, like a purring cat beneath his fingers. Neville moved it in a very slight motion, and immediately, the sparks trailed after it.  
  
"Good work," Harry said, impressed.  
  
"Yes," Ollivander said. "Yes, very good. That's -- "  
  
"Holly, isn't it?" James asked coolly.  
  
Ollivander smiled. "Yes. Holly. Holly and phoenix feather. Eleven inches. It's -- "  
  
"A fine wand," Lily finished.  
  
"Yes," Ollivander said. "A fine wand indeed."  
  
Neville wanted to ask what Ollivander was thinking about, but didn't. Ollivander was a strange old man, he decided, and what he wanted to say was probably strange as well. He'd find out from someone else.  
  
They each paid for their wands, and once they were well away, Neville caught up to James, who was walking by Harry. "What was Mr. Ollivander going to say?"  
  
"I don't know," James said.  
  
"Then why…?"  
  
"He's a funny old coot," James told him. "Not a bad man, per se, but not one I trust not to say anything strange. Your wand… it's a part of your life, Neville. You should get to know it for what it is, not for what Mr. Ollivander has decided it is."  
  
"All right,'" Neville said. "I can do that."  
  
"Good man."  
  
Pete squirmed down from Lily's hip and ran forward to where they were walking. He held his arms up to Harry, who scooped him up absently and put him on his shoulders.  
  
"I'm tall!" Pete said.  
  
"Practically a giant," James agreed.  
  
Harry ran ahead, leaning slightly from side to side so that Pete screamed with delight at the exciting ride.  
  
Neville went ahead to catch up with them, and after a few minutes, Pete reached for him as well, and begged to be passed back and forth all the way back to the Leaky Cauldron, where Lily took him by Floo back to Godric's Hollow.  
  
They tucked their new purchases away as soon as they got back. Neville kept his in his bags, and Harry put his own into his brand new school trunk. There was no time to go through the books or try the wands, though.  
  
There was, after all, a party to set up.


	4. The Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville and Harry share their birthday celebration, and Neville overhears more about his own past.

The Birthday was something like a bank holiday, as far as the families were concerned.   
  
Sure, it was technically in honor of Harry's and Neville's birthdays, but really, it was generally a warm summer day, a pleasant evening, and an excuse for a long, leisurely picnic, with games and music and flying around in the even-more-expanded-than-usual back garden. Usually, it was just the Potters, the Longbottoms, and some of the family friends, but this year, as the last before Hogwarts, Neville prepared himself for a bigger crowd than usual, and he was not disappointed.  
  
Gran got in around four o'clock, bearing a picnic basket that everyone dipped into during the preparations. Sirius Black came with a woman Neville had never seen before, and, judging by his experience with Sirius's previous guests, would never see again. She had a gloomy son with her ("He'll be in your year," Sirius said, almost apologetically), and he disappeared to shop in town before he could be called on for preparation help. They brought a wizarding tent that set up easily under the elm tree, but opened up inside to a hall big enough to house a Muggle disco. Sirius, in fact, hung a mirrored ball from one of the rafters. The woman Conjured something that looked like a Muggle record player, though Neville supposed it worked on magic.  
  
A contingent came from Hogwarts together -- Remus Lupin, Professor McGonagall, the huge gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid, and the ancient Potions master, Horace Slughorn.  They said that Dumbledore himself expected to be along later.  Hagrid brought a unicorn foal which Vi Potter declared the most important creature in attendance, and Neville had to admit, it didn't look like it was here against its will. Vi forgot entirely about Neville as she devoted herself to it, which was fine with Neville. The Weasleys came at six on the dot to see if any help was needed with the set-up, and Lily set Molly to work getting the food table together while she herself set up the lighting. Ginny immediately made her way over to Vi and the unicorn foal, and that was the last Neville saw of her for quite a while.   
  
Neville found himself in a circle of redheaded boys who wanted to see his scar, though their comments on it boiled down to, "Whoa, it's real." After that business was taken care of, they seemed to forget about it, and everyone talked about Hogwarts houses and Quidditch teams and what the hard classes were. Harry and Neville were required at several points to produce their wands for guests to admire.  
  
Just before the party officially began at seven, a young witch in scarlet robes Apparated in and promptly tripped over her own feet offering to help Molly. The eldest Weasley boy in attendance, Percy, somberly greeted her as "Miss Tonks," asking her how her post-school life had been. She grinned sideways and said, "In the six weeks I've been out, I've become an entirely different person, Mr. Weasley, if you please." She rolled her eyes extravagantly, then spotted the actual Mr. Weasley -- a Ministry worker who was apparently at least a little chummy with Lily, who was currently involved in stringing some distraction spells to prevent airborne Muggles from noticing anything -- and yelled, "Wotcher, Arthur! Need a hand with that?"  
  
"I'm fine, Nymphadora!" he called back.  
  
From three different parts of the garden, James, Sirius, and Lupin yelled, "Don't call her Nymphadora!"  
  
She looked up, startled, in Lupin's direction, then blushed madly and went off to help Mr. Weasley.  
  
"What's that about?" Harry asked, mystified.  
  
The Weasley twins laughed. "Reckon she's just thinking of how much he helped her get ready for her apprenticeship," one of them said (Neville had no idea which was which).  
  
"Yeah," the other said, "she was always greatly interested in Defense Against the Dark Arts."  
  
Percy frowned. "Professor Lupin's behavior is impeccable, and you both know it."  
  
"We weren't talking about him," a twin said. "He's fine."  
  
The other snorted laughter. "It's not his fault he's got a little fan club following him around. I think Tonks was the president."  
  
"She's an Auror now," Percy said.  
  
"She's an apprentice."  
  
"She has legal authority to arrest you."  
  
The twin gave a snort. "She's still Tonks. She'd probably use the laughing powder she used to feed Charlie." He turned to Neville and Harry. "Everyone thought Tonks and Charlie were a thing, but they mostly just pranked each other. Hope the pair of you are ready to join in. We lost two good pranksters when they left."  
  
Harry nodded enthusiastically, and started asking questions about what sort of pranks they pulled, and how much trouble they got in for it.  
  
Neville didn't care much about pranks, and didn't think he'd be very good at them, so he decided to mingle before Gran came over and ordered him to do so for the sake of manners.  He thought she would be pleased at this.  When he'd been small, she'd frequently had to fish him out of tool sheds and root cellars to come out and make his manners.  
  
Many more people had arrived since the last time he'd looked around, and for a minute, he was nearly frozen. There were _too_ many. The Potters must have invited every person they knew who had an eleven-year-old  in the family, plus every teacher, and…  
  
He wanted to run inside, maybe catch his breath in kitchen, but it was very possible that there were people there. The toilet, maybe. At least they let you close the door there.  
  
But he didn't hide.  He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he'd known it was going to be a bigger crowd this year, then started moving through the crowd, saying his hellos, pretending to know people who waved to him. The Potters seemed to have invited a good number of families with eleven-year-olds. Hannah Abbott and the Patil twins, who weren't usually in Harry's circles, were over near the unicorn. Neville spent a few minutes with them. Vi was still obsessed with the creature, and seemed to know a lot about it. She was in charge of Pete for the moment, and he was listening to her with rapt attention. Even the older girls were respectful, though they seemed almost as prone to fawning over Pete as over the animal.  Hannah was holding him on her lap and playing with his curls.  
  
Ernie Macmillan, who wasn't a regular in Neville's life, but with whom he'd once spent a pleasant afternoon talking about astronomy, was currently trying to engage Sirius Black in a conversation about the day's proceedings at the Wizengamot (about which he had been reading in the _Daily Prophet_ , and seemed to have more information than Sirius did). The young woman called Tonks had apparently got over her nervousness, because she and Lupin were having an animated conversation about how the Aurors ought to handle deliberate curse-spreading.  Neville didn't know anything about the subject, so he just listened to them for a little while. James and several other adults were zipping around overhead on brooms (Neville had the odd idea that one of them was Minerva McGonagall, but that couldn't be right).  
  
The Changs, whose daughter was a year older than Neville, were at a picnic table with the Bones family, whose daughter, Susan, had been a playmate of Harry's and Neville's when they were all small, but who had spent time abroad and come back after the girl business started making a difference. She was still nice, but she never joined them on their regular days. She waved cheerfully, and Neville waved back.  
  
He spent a little while with Blaise Zabini, the son of Sirius's date; Neville wasn't sure when he'd got back from his "errands" in town.  He seemed to find the whole business of attending school distasteful, and Neville couldn't engage him on any subject.  He stared at the scar for a little while, but didn't ask about it.  Neville wasn't sorry to make his excuses and leave.  
  
He moved on and talked to an old man named Mundungus, and then to a tall, pretty woman named Miss Vance. Keeping track of which grown-ups liked their first names and which ones wanted titles and last names -- let alone _which_ titles -- was about as much as his memory could stand, and he was sure he'd make a mistake and mortally offend one of them before the night was out.  
  
He'd lost track of everyone by the time he finished his rounds. Sometimes he hated charms. It shouldn't have been possible to lose track of anyone in the Potters' back garden. But the impromptu Quidditch game had ended, and Neville could no longer see any of the people he knew at all well.  
  
He considered finding another stranger to talk to, but his throat closed up in protest, and he decided he'd forced himself through enough of it. He spotted the tent, and figured it would be a perfectly good place for Harry to decide to bring the others. He ducked inside.  
  
It wasn't as crowded as he'd thought it might be. People were enjoying the nice weather outside. He didn't see Harry and the others on the upper balconies that the tent opened onto, so he went down a staircase toward a shadowy little alcove.  
  
It didn't solve where Harry had got to, but now he could see the adults he knew. It was some kind of bar, he guessed. Lily and Lupin were sitting on high stools while James stood behind a counter, pouring drinks. Sirius was milling about as well, and Tonks was sitting on top of a table.  
  
Neville started to go over -- he was fine spending time with adults, and he'd liked listening to Tonks and Lupin earlier -- but before they noticed him, he heard Tonks say, "…gave up the Longbottoms?"  
  
Neville froze, standing in a deep shadow under the stairs.  
  
The adults were quiet for a second, then Lily said. "Yes. It's true. He did. Well, we think  he did, anyway."  
  
"I still don't understand what they think they'll get out of him at this late date," James said. "The damage is done. He's told everything he means to tell."  
  
"He is why you're alive," Lily said through clenched teeth.  
  
"He gets no points for that, since he set Voldemort on Frank and Alice instead."  
  
"I don't mean he should get points for it. Just that… talking to him can be complicated."  
  
"I still don't understand what happened," Tonks said. "He wasn't very clear during the interviews."  
  
"Then maybe the Ministry should stop using bloody Dementors," Lupin said. "You can't get anything from anyone who's been around them for long."  
  
"What's to get? He doesn't know anything anymore." Sirius grimaced. "As far as we can tell," he told Tonks, "Voldemort figured out that our friend, Peter Pettigrew, was Lily and James's secret keeper. There was a prophecy about a boy born at the end of July. That's why we always interview old Snivelly at the end of July and Halloween. Maybe one of these years, it'll shake loose what he knows about how… well. You know what happened at the Garden."  
  
"I know that Voldemort changed his mind and went after little Neville."  
  
"Right," James said. "The first plan was apparently Harry. God knows why; _we_ never did. The whole thing hinged on Voldemort marking the child as an equal, so why not just… avoid marking either of them? If I were Voldemort, that's what I'd have done. Just don't bloody mark anyone and poof, no prophecy."  
  
"Sweetheart," Lily said, "if you were Voldemort, we'd have settled the whole thing with a Quidditch match."  
  
"And wouldn't that have been infinitely more civilized?" James sighed.   
  
"Dumbledore doesn't think he heard the whole prophecy," Lupin said patiently, addressing himself to Tonks.  "He just heard the beginning, and went off half-cocked."  
  
"Didn't do too well in Divination, did he?" Tonks asked.  "That's introduction level stuff."  
  
Lupin smiled at her.  
  
"At any rate," James said, "even though all the signs said Voldemort was planning to go for Harry, we didn't take any chances. The Longbottoms went into hiding as well. Algie was their Secret Keeper.  Peter was ours.  It was a dangerous choice.  He always looked like the weakest link, and so we thought -- "  
  
" <i>I</I> thought," Sirius said. "I was too clever by half.  I thought we could make him look like an even weaker link, and no one would suspect…"  
  
"Wormy knew the risks," Lily said, reaching across and touching Sirius's wrist.  "He never thought it was a safe assignment."  
  
"But we thought it would be safer than it was.  Peter always thought people would forget about him."  
  
Lupin sighed.  "To make a long story short," he told Tonks, "we outsmarted ourselves."  
  
"You had nothing to do with it," Sirius said. "I'm the idiot.  We didn't even tell you."  
  
"I was off watching the werewolves that year.  Not the safest person to give secrets to."  
  
"At any rate," James said, giving both of them a clear _Stop-It_ sort of look, " _someone_ knew that Peter was still close to us.  And told Voldemort about it."    
  
"Apparently, I was too obvious a choice as Secret Keeper," Sirius said.  "Which was the same reasoning I used for making the switch.  I should have taken it one step further and realized that they'd think the same thing, so I should do it, because I'd be the last one they'd _actually_ suspect."  He shook his head.  "Voldemort caught Peter and decided to torture him to give up the information. Peter held out for hours. He never broke. We got in there and dragged him out before they could kill him. But he's… you've seen him at St. Mungo's."  
  
Tonks nodded. "Why didn't they… I mean, Fidelius is broken when the Secret Keeper dies, or at least spread out, so why bother with… with what they did?"  
  
"Because there can be more layers to it. He probably wanted to know if he'd need to break another Secret Keeper, or who he could follow to the house." Sirius shrugged. "Or, he just enjoyed it. That was always a possibility with Voldemort."  
  
Tonks nodded. "So, you're all pretty sure that…"  
  
"We don't know that Sev gave Peter up," Lily said.  
  
"Oh, who _else_?" James asked.  
  
"Anyone who knew the four of you." Lily held up her glass, and James refilled it with a flick of his wand. "We know he didn't want to kill me."  
  
"The rest of us were expendable," James grumbled.  
  
"No one's nominating him for sainthood," Lily said, then turned to Tonks. "We don't know exactly what transpired when we got Peter out of there. Severus has never been entirely clear on the subject. The best we've been able to piece together is that Voldemort wanted to attack Peter again and kill him -- probably because of what you suggested, that it would simply break the spell and he could look for us like normal people -- but Severus somehow… er…"  
  
"Reminded him that there was always another baby to kill," Sirius finished. "Not to put too fine a point on it. Why not take care of both of them? Get a little warm-up in by murdering the Longbottoms."  
  
"I doubt that was the thought process," Lupin said. "Frank and Alice had already kicked him in the teeth three times. They rescued Sophie Prewett, they'd got the Patil twins out of that trap -- remember that? -- and they'd broken his Imperius Curse on the Chief Warlock. I doubt he approached them lightly."  
  
"And do you think that if he'd managed to kill Neville, he _wouldn't_ have killed Peter at St. Mungo's, then come marching straight to this door to kill Harry, too?" Sirius summoned a bottle from behind the bar and drank straight from it. "We should have put a heavier guard on Frank and Alice after we got Peter out."  
  
"We thought that the fact that he went after Peter meant that he'd settled on… where he wanted to go." Lily looked down. "And Dumbledore thought that Severus had…"  
  
"Had turned spy over you," James said. "Apparently, Dumbledore forgot that you were the _only_ one he cared about."  
  
"We don't know what happened," Lily said.  
  
"Well, _something_ bloody well changed Voldemort's mind, and Snape knows what it was, even if it wasn't him, and he's not in a rush to tell us," Sirius said. He looked at Tonks. "We should have gone straight over. Never take anything for granted, no matter what it looks like."  
  
In the shadows, Neville took a step back and leaned against the wall. In a minute or two, he'd managed to hear more about what really happened that night than he'd got from Gran in eleven years. He had no real memory of it, just the scent of the heather he'd been found in. He'd known there'd been some kind of betrayal, and that Harry's little brother was named for the man who'd been tortured into madness that night, but he'd never heard any other names, and had no idea what to make of the rest of it.  
  
For a moment -- just a moment -- he thought about marching right up and saying, "Will someone tell me the rest of this?" But he didn't. Partly, he was just nervous about demanding a story they hadn't told. Mostly, a very big part of him didn't want to know.  
  
Before it could go any further, he backed into the shadow, and sneaked back up the stairs.  
  
He was barely outside when a broom swooped down and Harry said, " _There_ you are! Been looking all over for you. Hagrid went back to Hogwarts and brought back a Crup puppy. Want to see?"  
  
_It could have been you_ , Neville thought. _You could be on your own, and I could have a whole big family, and a little brother and sister, and a godfather on the Wizengamot._  
  
But the thought didn't bring any anger or jealousy. He didn't begrudge Harry his life; he just wished they both could have had it.  
  
So, instead of going off to consider what he'd heard, he followed Harry, who flew low, just hovering over the ground, back to the temporary paddock that Hagrid had made by pushing picnic tables into a square.  
  
Neville didn't know Hagrid as well as his grandmother did (or had claimed to yesterday), but he was a familiar enough presence -- a huge man with bushy black hair and twinkling eyes. He'd got kicked out of Hogwarts when he was a kid, but Neville didn't know why, and gathered that it would be rude to ask. In one giant hand, he held what almost looked like a regular puppy, but it had a forked tail.  
  
"This one's just a bit of thing," he said. "Wizengamot says the tail will have to go in a month or so."  
  
"Why?" the Chang girl, Cho, asked. "It's so cute!" She reached over and scratched between its ears.  
  
"Yeah, but if you're going to have it around Muggles and all, it needs to look like what they know."  
  
"So keep him at Hogwarts!" Ginny Weasley protested. "We'd all visit."  
  
"You're not there until next year," one of the twins said.  
  
"Well, I'll visit _then_ , and you can visit until!" Ginny reached over and scratched the puppy's belly. "It just doesn't seem right to cut him up."  
  
"Well, I reckon maybe I could ask about it. Kettleburn wants to teach things like that -- yeh know, about right and wrong when it comes to interestin' creatures. Maybe the Ministry wouln' mind havin' one just at Hogwarts."  
  
"How come we couldn't have one for a pet, like an owl or a cat?" Harry asked, dismounting his broom and holding it up beside him like a post to lean on. "It could guard a room or something."  
  
"Well, that's the problem," Hagrid said. "Crups are a little aggressive. Mostly around Muggles, but I've heard tell of them going after things that Muggle-borns bring from home."  
  
Harry stood back, wrinkling his nose. " _Oh._ "  
  
"Well, it ain't their fault, is it?" Hagrid said indignantly. "No more than unicorns not liking boys much. It's the way we've bred 'em up, and it's nothin' to be holding against the creatures. It takes a few generations breed that out."  
  
The Crup seemed to have lost some of its charm for several of them, whatever Hagrid said. Ginny gave it a strained smile, then went back to the unicorn. Cho Chang didn't seem to know _what_ to do. The Weasley twins gave each other a frustrated look.  
  
Neville reached in and scratched the thing's belly, making its hind legs go around and around in delight while its forked tail wagged madly. It didn't have a choice. Hagrid was right about that. It wasn't like person who might _choose_ to send a dark wizard after a baby, after all.  
  
Harry sighed. "Well, maybe he can play with that thing Aunt Tuney sent. Looks like it would put up with a bit of rough handling."  
  
"There you are," Hagrid said. "That's the spirit."  
  
Neville held out his hands, and Hagrid gave him the Crup, which didn't seem even a little bit hostile. Then again, Neville was a pure-blood wizard, and had met about six Muggles in his life… if you counted the little family he'd seen yesterday in Whitechapel.  
  
Then again, the Crup also didn't have any trouble with Lily Potter when she came up five minutes later, and she was Muggle-born. She told Harry to give it the game his aunt had sent, and it didn't have any response to that, either.  
  
"It's learned," Lily said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. "Like anything else, it's learned. Now, let's give the poor thing a burger. Has anyone bothered feeding it?"  
  
No one had, and once Lily had given permission of sorts, everyone started flocking in to fuss over the puppy again, except for the girls who'd returned to the unicorn.  
  
After a while, it evidenced a need to be taken for a walk, and Lupin suggested that the "birthdays" ought to start contributing to the general welfare, which was probably a ploy to give Neville some breathing room. Lily did a quick spell to hide the tail, and James Conjured a lead. (Sirius expressed great offense at this for reasons that apparently made sense to the others, as they laughed heartily.) Harry took the lead and headed out; Neville followed.  
  
It was a warm, dampish night that wanted to rain but wasn't going to. Neville could smell the water in the air. It was hard to think of what to talk about, as they couldn't very well talk about Hogwarts while they were passing under Muggle windows. But they'd walked these cobbled streets many times over the years as shadows descended and the mixed world of Godric's Hollow breathed and danced around them.  
  
Harry led the way past the pubs and offices, the old cottages, the closed shops. He turned up the street that led to the play park, and let the Crup do its business in the grass near the swings. Pulling a plastic bag from his pocket, he said, "Can't wait until we can just…" He flicked his hand irritably at the pile of dirt and made motion as if to vanish it.  
  
Neville nodded and went to the swings. He sat down carefully, as, more than once, he'd missed the seat here and ended up in the mud. He swayed a little bit. Harry sat down in the swing beside him, letting the Crup pull him back and forth a little.  
  
"What's up with you?" he asked.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're walking around like a funeral."  
  
"Oh." Neville dug his toe into the ground and made the swing sway side to side. "I just… I went looking for everyone earlier and…"  
  
He told Harry what he'd heard the adults talking about. He didn't figure he'd tell anyone else, but as Harry was just as wrapped up in it, it seemed fair.  
  
"I remember something that," he said. "I mean, they always said it could have been me, too." He glanced over, shame-faced. "Er, sorry."  
  
"For… not getting killed?"  
  
"It does sound stupid when you put it like that."  
  
Neville shrugged. "It's not important. I just wondered if you ever heard them talking."  
  
Harry didn't answer right away. He pushed the swing back and forth and looked up at the sky, where the stars were blurry in the humid night. Finally he said, "I know Dad and Sirius hate Severus Snape, and Lupin doesn't like him much -- Lupin doesn't really hate people, you know? He says it takes too much energy and doesn't have it to spare."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Anyway, I guess Mum was Snape's friend before he went Death Eater. Aunt Tuney knew him, too. They're all from Spinner's End. Not that _I've_ ever been. Mum says there's nothing there now, with my grandparents gone, and Aunt Tuney says there never _was_ anything there, and…" He twisted the swing so the chains crossed, then let them go. The swing moved violently back and forth. The Crup seemed to like the whipsawing lead, chasing it and pouncing on it. Harry waited for the motion to calm a little, then said, "Lupin once said something about Dad and Sirius making it pretty easy for Snape to join the other side. And _Dad_ said that Snape was halfway there already, and anyway, it didn't matter, because he made the bad call. And then Mum yelled at them to stop talking about it. I'm pretty sure it was ugly. I don't know where your parents came into it."  
  
"I don't, either."  
  
"Except everyone thought it was about Mum… except for Voldemort. He thought it was about you."  
  
"Or you," Neville, said.  
  
"Or me," Harry agreed, staring at his feet in the loose dirt under the swings.  
  
But he could never stay down for long. He rolled his eyes and handed Neville the Crup's lead, then he started kicking until the swing went high into the sky, the same way Vi was riding the one back at the Potters' yesterday. And the height of the arc, he flung himself off. He hovered just a bit longer than he probably should have, but there was no one to see it. He came down in a roll, and the Crup, delighted at the game, bounded over to him at the far reach of the lead and jumped on top of him, licking his face and making urgent little yipping sounds until both of them were laughing.  
  
They headed home a few minutes later, laughing and joking and ignoring indignant shouts from upper windows to "Quiet down, will you?"  
  
When they got back to the house, many of the guests had left, including the Weasleys and the Patils. Healer Chang was helping Lily get the mess organized for cleaning, and the Abbots were gathering up their things. Gran insisted that Neville make the rounds for thank yous and goodbyes, tutting about his having disappeared so late, but she knew he'd been allowed out.   
  
Hagrid and Lupin were getting the animals ready to go back, and Harry jerked his head in that direction. Neville followed.  
  
"Do you just…?" Harry pantomimed pointing a wand at the animals.  
  
"Live creatures don't travel all that well that way," Lupin said. "There's a spell. It's related to the Portkey spell, but a bit less jarring for the animals. It takes them to their stalls."  
  
"Can't I say goodnight?" Vi asked, yawning and coming up. Pete was sound asleep on top of the table. "Please, Moony!"  
  
"Go ahead," he said.  
  
Vi went to the unicorn and kissed its nose. "I'll be your very best friend when I come to Hogwarts," she said. "I promise."  
  
It nickered.  
  
Harry clapped for the Crup, and it came over to him. He handed it to Hagrid. "Guess I'll see you in a month or so," he told both of them."  
  
"Right you are. Don't you be causing me trouble, though!" Hagrid added with a grin.  
  
Lupin had finished whatever he was doing, and he tapped the unicorn's bridle. It faded away. Hagrid apparently couldn't do the spellwork himself, because Lupin did a similar spell on him. Soon, it was just the family, and then Gran led Neville to the fireplace, and a few minutes later, the Birthday was over.  
  


	5. August

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville's last month before school includes meetings, study, and preparation.

August went forward like an elastic band, stretching out here, snapping forward there, propelling Neville toward school in fits and spurts.  
  
After the party, Harry's dad -- along with Sirius and Lupin -- had given Harry a blank piece of parchment which they claimed to be full of magic, and had told him how to unlock it… but he wasn't allowed to use his wand until school started, so he couldn't figure out if they'd given him something worthwhile, or if they were having him on for a joke. "They named me a Marauder, anyway, which Dad says is what they called themselves," he said on a long afternoon in Neville's garden. "Supposedly, Lupin is called Moony as a 'Marauder name,' and I'm to discover my own later on. Not that I've any hint where to look for it." He shook his head. "They said I'd need fellow Marauders. You're in, right?"  
  
"I don't know what a Marauder _is_."  
  
"Well, neither do I, but Dad and Sirius and Moony and Peter were Marauders, so I reckon it's nothing bad."  
  
"They didn't even tell you what it meant?"  
  
"No! I'm supposed to figure out what it means 'for me.' Like it's a code word. They only told me it was about having best friends. So you're in, right?"  
  
"I… well, as long as it doesn't mean anything bad, and I'm not supposed to do anything bad for it…"  
  
"You're in," he said testily. "And the thing, the parchment. Maybe it's a compact or something, like… rules and ideas and… I don't know."  
  
"If you're supposed to figure it out -- what it means, I mean -- then why would they give you a big set of rules?"  
  
"Right. So maybe it's the best spells they know or something."  
  
"We couldn't do them right away, could we?"  
  
"Maybe we could do them _eventually_." He climbed up on a garden statue of a large turtle and sat on it cross-legged. "They know good spells, I know that. They liked to play funny pranks."  
  
"Oh. I'm not… I don't really…"  
  
"Yeah, that's not really you, is it?" He bit his lip. "I don't know. What _do_ you want to do at Hogwarts? I mean, other than the greenhouses."  
  
Neville shrugged. "I figured I'd find out when I got there. Apart from Quidditch, what do you want?"  
  
"I want to be in Gryffindor, like Mum and Dad."  
  
"You will."  
  
"Do you want Gryffindor? Your grandmother was a Gryffindor."  
  
"And Dad was a Hufflepuff, and Mum was a Ravenclaw, and I guarantee a good lot of Slytherins on one side or another. I could be anything. Probably Hufflepuff."  
  
"Right, just like you're probably a Squib."  
  
"There's nothing wrong with Hufflepuff!"  
  
"I didn't mean there was! And there's nothing wrong with being a Squib, either, before you say it. You just… you always sound like you figure you won't get much magically, and I guessed…"  
  
"I really do think it would be good. I like Hufflepuff. They do service stuff over the summers. The Macmillans do volunteer work at St. Mungo's, and Ernie wants to volunteer at the Wizengamot. They run memos and things, and they get to hear everything that happens. That would be fun."  
  
Harry snorted. "Not according to Sirius."  
  
"The head of Hufflepuff is the Herbology teacher, too."  
  
"Oh. Well, if it's what you want. But would you still be able to be… you know.. I mean, would we still be mates?" Harry looked away awkwardly.  
  
"You're worried about that?"  
  
He leaned forward over his crossed legs and looked over the garden. "When we get there, well… the whole chosen one thing… you know everyone's going to want to be your friend, right?"  
  
"I've always had the scar," Neville said. "No one else ever wanted to be my friend before."  
  
Harry made a kind of screwed up face, like he was daring himself to say something. "People ask me about you when you're not there, you know. If I'm at the Ministry, or wherever. They want to know what the chosen one is like."  
  
"Really? What do you… I mean… how do you answer it?"  
  
He grinned. "Well, I tell them you're a right pain, all full of yourself, but I'm afraid to say anything because you might blast me to bits and -- "  
  
"Come on, Harry."  
  
"I say, 'Neville's my friend and he's just Neville.' Then I change the subject. But they'll all be there."  
  
"And you think I'd rather be friends with them? That's just weird, Harry. Don't be stupid."  
  
"I guess I don't really think it." He frowned and went back to his main subject. "So, maybe it's some old fraternal organization and Dad gave us the initiation ritual…"  
  
And the conversation went on. That day seemed to last forever, but then in a blink of an eye, it was gone, and the month seemed half-gone with it.  
  
On a much longer-seeming day, Gran had Minerva McGonagall in for tea. Neville thought of McGonagall as Gran's friend, but it was a strange, sharp-edged friendship. McGonagall was the Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts, and, unlike other staff members Neville had met in his life, he had _always_ addressed her as "Professor," even when she and Gran were sitting in the parlor trading stories about their time in the war against Grindelwald. They did this in a tone of brusque impatience, like trading war stories was an unpleasant bit of business that must be got over every year or so. From anyone else, tales of going undercover in Germany under Grindelwald -- tales of rescuing Squibs and Muggle-borns, of smuggling out powerful artifacts, of sabotaging battalions -- would be exciting, or so Neville imagined. With Gran and Professor McGonagall, they were rattled off like a shopping list for a particularly dull potions project, which they both looked forward to being done with.   
  
Once the war stories had been told, Gran tried to bring up Hogwarts, but McGonagall said, "No, it's better, Augusta, if Neville separates his home life and his school life."  
  
Neville wondered if Harry had got a similar suggestion from Lupin (and how would he ever remember to call his babysitter "Professor"?), and thought probably not.  
  
Another long, rainy day was spent with Susan Bones, lazing around in her aunt Amelia's parlor, playing board games and speculating about life at Hogwarts while Gran and Mrs. Bones hashed out something about a statue of Mum and Dad that was supposed to go up at the Ministry.   
  
Susan seemed to know a good deal about Hufflepuff House, where she really wanted to be.  
  
"It's where people are meant to be nice to one another," she said. "Think about it. In Gryffindor, everyone's always competing. Who's going to be the real hero? Then in Ravenclaw, it's always about who can make the best marks, who's the smartest. And in Slytherin… well, one-upping each other is pretty much the whole point. But Hufflepuff, you can go home at night and just relax."  
  
That seemed to settle it, but Harry insisted on a day to argue for Gryffindor, and he had back-up from all of the adults in his life. Gryffindor was about fun and action, and, according to Lupin especially, about always standing up for what was right. "Being brave isn't about trying to beat everyone else to the glory," he said. "Being brave is about looking the world in the eye, and when it's wrong, saying, 'I'm not going to stand for that.'"  
  
"Or at least it's _meant_ to be," Lily said, raising an eyebrow.  
  
Sirius rolled his eyes.  "Yes, well, we do all fall short of our ideals now and then."  
  
"Harry and Neville will fall less short," James put in.  
  
No one explained.  
  
Feeling that he'd only got the argument for two Houses, Neville asked Gran to bring him to Flourish and Blotts, where a frazzled assistant directed him to a book called _Hogwarts, A History_ , if he really wanted an idea about all of the houses. He only got lost a few times in the twisting stacks, trying to find his way back to the little, boxed in alcove where the book was meant to be.  
  
When he got there, there was a bushy-haired girl curled up in a puffy chair, reading a copy avidly, twisting her hair and biting her lip like she was trying to memorize the whole thing for an examination tomorrow morning. He tried to take a copy from the shelf over her head without her noticing, but he accidentally knocked the thing off. It fell onto her lap.  
  
She looked up eagerly. "Oh, are you for Hogwarts, then?" she asked. "I'm Hermione Granger. I…" She frowned. "Is that a scar on your head. Are you…?"  
  
Neville remembered what Harry had said about people wanting to meet him and ask questions about him, so he just flattened down his fringe and said. "I… er… I wanted to know more about the houses. About Ravenclaw and Slytherin."  
  
"Oh, Ravenclaw sounds quite lovely," the girl said. "Books and questions and debates. Very interesting. I think I'd like it, though Albus Dumbledore himself was a Gryffindor, and I'd much rather have that.  I think one can be brave without giving up on being intelligent.  Although I suppose that would be true in the inverse as well.  One can be intelligent without giving up bravery.  I just admire everything I've read about Professor Dumbledore.  I rather wish he still taught classes. That would be amazing! Slytherin sounds a bit dodgy, though. Where do you want to be?"  
  
He barely noticed that she'd finished on a question, so quick was her speech. "I… er… well, I don't… that is to say…"  
  
"Oh, it's very exciting isn't it? I really can't wait to get on the Hogwarts Express. My ticket came by owl already. Why do you suppose we need tickets? Couldn't they have a charm to know who belongs on the train? You'd think that would be simpler than trusting everyone not to lose a ticket. You just go on the train, and if you don't belong there, you glow or some whistle goes off.  That seems much more magical."  
  
She seemed to expect an answer to this, but Neville was flummoxed. "I guess… well, trains expect to have tickets, I suppose."  
  
This didn't seem to satisfy her. "I can't wait to see the Great Hall," she said. "The ceiling is enchanted. I can't quite picture it. It should feel like being outside, except that you can't feel the weather. I wonder what that will be like. I've never really seen magic, except what I've done, and that's not much.  Well, of course I saw the arch open to get into Diagon Alley, today, and a few things in the windows. Professor Lupin showed all of us some levitation as well.  He says we'll  learn that first thing. Mum says I once made the toys in my cot dance, but I don't remember that. I guess my parents weren't _awfully_ surprised to find out I was a witch. I think they were more surprised to find out there were other witches and wizards and a whole world out there. Are you… like me, or are your parents…" Again, she looked for the scar, looking anxious, as though she was afraid she'd made some kind of faux pas by mistaking him for a celebrity she'd read about, and didn't want to call attention to the mistake.  
  
"My parents are dead," Neville said, almost in self-defense against the barrage. "They… they were… are you Muggle-born?"  
  
"Yes. I am. I don't know anything really, not yet, but I can't wait to -- " She looked over Neville's shoulder. "Oh, there's my mum."  
  
Neville turned to find a woman who looked something like the girl -- especially through the hair -- coming up behind him, her arms piled up with books. She looked more than a little bit lost.  
  
"Hermione," she said, "Professor Lupin says it's time to finish up so we can all go to Ollivander's."  
  
"Oh." She stood up and took the books, adding _Hogwarts, A History_ to the pile, then smiled over the top of it at Neville. "Well, it was nice to meet you. I can't wait to see you at school. I have to go back to orientation now."  
  
She left without asking for Neville's name.  
  
He took his copy of _Hogwarts, A History_ and looked at it quizzically, wondering if it cast a spell that would make him so talkative. He hoped not.  
  
He spotted several other eleven-year-olds flitting about the shop, then saw Remus Lupin standing casually near the door.  
  
Neville went over to him and said, "Is this Muggle-born orientation?"  
  
"Yes," Lupin said. "My mother always said we ought to have had it. She actually always said we should contact Muggle-borns before they're eleven and give them a chance to learn their way around before school, but… small steps. I got Hogwarts to approve the orientation three years ago. I saw you were talking to Miss Granger?"  
  
"Well, she was talking to me, at any rate."  
  
Lupin laughed. "Well, she's excited. She's a nice girl. I hope she finds friends at school."  
  
Neville was fairly sure this was an instruction to befriend the girl. If he'd been with Harry, he'd have been _completely_ sure of it, as Lupin, like Sirius Black, was comfortable giving Harry directives like that, but it wasn't as clear without him.  
  
"I'll try," he said.  "Er… to be her friend.  Other than Harry, I don't have many."  
  
"You'll do fine," Lupin said.  "Would you like to meet any of the others?  They will be your classmates, after all.  You might get along nicely with…" He looked around.  "Oh, any of them.  But perhaps Justin or Dean in particular."  
  
Neville considered it, then shook his head.  He had no idea if other Muggle-borns would be as talkative as the girl, but if they were, he thought his head might spin off.  
  
He said goodbye to Lupin and paid for his book, then went back out into Diagon Alley.  He supposed he could count at least half of what the girl said as an argument for Ravenclaw, which meant that he only needed to get one for Slytherin to have a full count. He wondered if he'd just find someone to start gushing.  He supposed he could try to find Malfoy. His family had been in Slytherin for a long while. But Neville didn't think anything Malfoy had to say would be convincing. Maybe there would be someone else.  
  
But the day ended before he happened to run into anyone, and the month snapped forward again in a rush of gardening, telling Gran how to care for the plants before winter, reading his school books, and generally spending the time like Sirius Black spent gold: Carelessly and recklessly, until his purse was empty.  
  
The thirty-first of August leapt out of nowhere, and Neville found himself with nothing packed and his ticket misplaced. He and Gran spent the day digging through all of his new belongings -- he had more than one occasion to think that the girl from the bookshop was right; there ought to be a charm instead -- before he finally found it, still tucked into the envelope with his Hogwarts letter, slipped behind his bureau. Once they had it, Gran straightened up magically and packed his trunk for him, muttering about how he'd lose track of his own head if she didn't keep a finding charm on it, then gave him an exasperated sigh.  
  
"Neville, you really must take better care of your things."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I won't be here forever."  
  
"Don't talk like that, Gran."  
  
She sighed. "Oh, I have no plans to disappear quickly. But I worry. You have some great work to do. I feel that. Something left unfinished… _there_." She jerked a finger toward the scar on his forehead.  
  
Neville felt a lump in his throat. "I thought that was over. In the past."  
  
"A fine belief, and one I hope fervently is true. But I worry that it isn't."  
  
"Why did he choose me instead of Harry?"  
  
Gran looked up sharply. "You've been listening at keyholes, haven't you? And now you're vexed."  
  
Neville nodded. He said nothing, but didn't back down from the question.  
  
"I don't have an answer for you," Gran said. "No one knows, except possibly Severus Snape, at Azkaban. I'm not even sure about that. We don't even know how you survived the curse. Dumbledore believes that your father sacrificed himself for you and cast something of a shield charm -- a very powerful one that caused the curse to back up on the one who cast it."  
  
"Do you think so?"  
  
"I don't know. It's the sort of thing Frank would have done, certainly, if he knew the moment was upon him. But it takes knowledge of an old magic.  Well, not knowledge, precisely, but belief or… well, it's a bit complex. Lily Potter explained it to me once; she researched it in case such a protection was necessary for Harry. She said it wasn't about the casting of it. There are no rituals to perform, no potions to brew. It's simply focusing all of one's magic in the last moment of life, channeling it…" Gran sighed. "I'm not sure how it works. Lily seemed to think that instinct would take over. I'm not sure if Frank would have had time to concentrate that fully, or if Lily had ever shared with him what she learned. But the point is, we don't know how it destroyed Voldemort, or _if_ it did in any complete sense… though I hope you have the intelligence not to spread that around. We don't need a panic."  
  
Neville couldn't imagine casually suggesting such a thing to other children at any rate, so he nodded.  
  
"But whatever the case, you were marked, Neville. There is something great inside of you. I have known this from the beginning."  
  
"I'm not great."  
  
"You are, though. I have no doubt of that. Alas, I have little doubt that tests of that greatness are in store. And for that, you will need to be able to keep track of your Hogwarts ticket, among other things." She smiled. "Now, get some sleep. We'll meet the Potters at the Leaky Cauldron for breakfast."  
  
Neville didn't think he'd be able to sleep, but he dropped off easily enough. He dreamed of a vast garden, full of bright, poisonous flowers. He wandered its paths aimlessly, sure that someone was following him, but unable to turn around and see who it was.  
  
He awoke just after dawn, and the early morning was something of a flurry. He walked Gran through his garden one last time, showing her what each of his plants needed, even though she knew. She was patient with this, as she readily admitted that Herbology was not her best subject, and she promised to keep him updated if anything seemed wrong. She would keep it climate controlled until he came home for Christmas, and he would take care of putting it to bed.  
  
He took one last look at it as she prepared the Floo connection, convinced that it would die without his constant care, even though he knew better. Then he took a deep breath and went inside. Gran held out the box of Floo powder, and a moment later, he was hurtling into Diagon Alley. Gran followed, Apparating in with his trunk, and they were swallowed in an odd early morning rush of families. Neville imagined the girl in the bookstore, now wondering not about tickets, but about why the Hogwarts Express didn't make stops all over the country. Why should everyone come to London just to ride back up north to Scotland?   
  
Of course, that wouldn't be her question. That would be asking for the train to be _more_ Muggle-like. It wasn't, after all, a major impediment to come to London in the morning, at least for wizarding families. Some came in on Muggle transit, some in borrowed cars. Those, like Neville, who came in from the North and just doubled back, simply traveled through Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron, and back out to King's Cross Station. He imagined it would be a somewhat more annoying commute for a Muggle from Aberdeen, and wondered if the girl would think of that. He doubted it. She'd sounded… well, local, for lack of a better word, and she'd probably just think it was only natural to leave from London.  
  
And why was he wondering what she was wondering about? Why was he thinking of her at all?  
  
As soon as he got into the Leaky Cauldron, before the brick archway had even closed, a hand shot out of the crowd, and Harry pulled him along. "Come on," he said. "Better get to the family before Vi decides to start shouting for you. Hi, Mrs. Longbottom." He came around Neville and took the strap on the trunk, which Gran had been lugging along. Neville should have done this himself, and kicked himself for not thinking of it.  
  
Harry led them through the breakfast crowd. Lily Potter was already at work, and James was trying to wrangle Vi and Pete, who seemed determined to escape and explore. There was a large, antique owl cage sitting on the floor beside him, and a white owl with golden eyes looked out of it.  
  
"Yours?" Neville asked.  
  
"Got her yesterday. Her name's Hedwig."  
  
"Hedwig?"  
  
"Yeah, I found it in a book. She just looks like a Hedwig." Harry grabbed Vi's hand as she tried to zoom by, then let go of the trunk and said, "Dad?"  
  
James steered Pete back to the family and in Neville's general direction. Neville caught hold of him by the shoulders, then Pete put his arms up to be picked up. He was a bit big for it, but Neville gave it a try.  
  
James pointed a wand at Neville's trunk and said, "Admire the new spellwork." The trunk rose into the air, then folded in and became a briefcase with a long strap. James slung it over his shoulder with another just like it.  
  
"You'll have to teach me that one," Gran said.  
  
"How do we get it back once we're at school?" Neville asked.  
  
"You forgot to ask that, Harry," James said. "Point your wand at it and say _Finite Incantatem_. If it doesn’t work, ask Moon… Ask Professor Lupin to help you. Or an older student. That's a simple one. Shall we?"  
  
He led the way through the Cauldron and out to the street, where what seemed to be a Muggle taxi was waiting. Neville realized that it wasn't what it seemed as soon as he saw the driver -- Sirius Black. The boot popped open, and James put in everything except Hedwig the owl, who Harry put in the center of the back seat. Everyone else piled inside, and there was room to spare.  
  
"It's actually my motorcycle," Black said. "This is what good study in Transfiguration will get you someday. That, and time with McGonagall, which is worth more than any spell." He placed his hand over his heart, then started the taxi and pulled out into traffic.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Did you bring one of the toads?"  
  
"No. They're happier in the garden."  
  
That was all the time there was to talk about the upcoming school year, because Pete abruptly started to weep, apparently realizing for the first time that Harry would be gone for several months. Harry pulled him over onto his lap and called him names, shadowboxing with him and promising that he'd write a letter now and then. "Really, Pete," he said, "I'll have much better stories for you. You know Dad and Mum's Hogwarts stories. I'll have them too, now."  
  
This didn't seem to appease Pete, who clung to Harry, crying, all the way to King's Cross. Vi sighed dramatically, and rolled her eyes in Neville's direction, as if they were sharing a tiresome joke.  
  
Neville, wanting to look away, glanced toward the front, and saw that Sirius Black was watching this in the rearview mirror, an unreadable look in his eyes.  
  
They got to King's Cross very early, before many of the families arrived, which would have been fine with Neville except that one of the other early families was the Malfoys. Draco noticed them as soon as they came through the magical barrier, and promptly pointed at him. His father looked over with unmitigated disdain.  
  
Sirius Black made a rude gesture in the general direction of the Malfoy family, then turned his back on them and shielded Neville and Harry from their gaze. "You'll both be careful of that lot, I assume."  
  
"If by 'careful,' you mean 'constant vigilance,' than yeah," Harry said.  
  
James tried not to grin. "Harry, your mother told me to make sure to tell you not to fight and to be… well… her exact words were, 'Tell him not to be as much of a prat as you were.'"  
  
"Meaning, leave Malfoy alone, even if he deserves a good cursing," Sirius said.  
  
"And remember that Professor Lupin is your teacher, not your babysitter -- "  
  
" -- so you can prank him much more often -- "  
  
"Not helping, Sirius."  
  
Sirius grinned. James rolled his eyes as extravagantly as Vi had done, then turned to Neville. "We both know you're the grown-up here. Don't let Harry talk you into doing anything stupid. Unless it sounds really fun." He winked.  
  
Gran pulled Neville aside while the Potters all said goodbye to Harry (Pete was still crying, and now Vi was starting, though she was trying gamely to hide it).  
  
"Now," Gran said, "do you have everything?"  
  
"I think so," Neville told her. "I guess so."  
  
"If I find anything later, I'll send it on to you." She looked him over sternly, not seeming anywhere near tears, though Neville himself felt them fairly close to the surface. "You know you have more important jobs than playing around. Try to enjoy yourself, of course" -- she frowned at him sternly, as if he had not shown sufficient aptitude for enjoying himself and she expected better from him -- "but remember that you are going to school to learn, and that learning, for you, may be for considerably more important tasks than examinations. You have a job to do somewhere down the line. Be prepared for it."  
  
"Yes, Gran."  
  
She looked at him again, her eyes inspecting him from the hairline to the toes. "For what it's worth, Neville, I believe you to be worthy of the task ahead. You are made of stern material, and you understand -- perhaps better than I at times -- what is of importance in life." She spotted some kind of dust mote on his cloak and plucked it away, then stood up. "Very well, then. Let's get you to school."  
  
A moment later, their trunks secured over their shoulders as briefcases, he and Harry were boarding the Hogwarts Express, and, seemingly seconds later, were on their way to Hogwarts.  



	6. A Gryffindor, of a Sort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville and Harry take the Hogwarts Express to school, where they join up with first Ron, then Hermione, before the Sorting.

"D'you reckon we can do magic on the train?" Harry asked, pulling out the apparently blank piece of parchment that James had given him. "I mean, is it part of Hogwarts, so it's not underage magic?"  
  
"I don't know," Neville said.  
  
"I'd have tried it earlier, but it… er… set off an alarm, and Dad took my wand until this morning."  
  
"Then I guess if it doesn't set off an alarm, it's all right."  
  
"And if it's not, I guess Dad can't just Apparate onto the train…"  
  
There was a tap at the door, and then the muffled sound of someone yelling, "Oh, very funny, Fred!"  
  
Harry pushed the parchment hurriedly under his cloak then said, "Come on in, Ron."  
  
Ron Weasley, shaking his head furiously, backed into the compartment, dragging his trunk. His robes seemed to be on their last few threads, no matter how good his mother was at repairing things, and his trunk looked about a hundred years old. The wand clasped in his fist was splintery and had deep finger marks in it. The trunk suddenly rose up on little cat feet and bumped the back of his knees.  
  
He raised the wand and pointed it down the corridor, but apparently chose to give up when a voice further down cried, "Go on, give it a try, Ronniekins!"  
  
"My brothers," he said through gritted teeth. "They hexed my trunk."  
  
"Then magic _is_ allowed on the train!" Harry said.  
  
"Yeah, I guess. Why?"  
  
Harry raised his wand at Ron's trunk and said, " _Finite incantatem._ "  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Ron tried it as well, to about the same effect.  "Well… maybe later."  
  
Harry bit his lip and Neville saw his finger trailing along the edge of the folded parchment, then he said, "So, what do you think about the Tutshill Tornadoes this year?"  
  
Ron shrugged and sat down. "They're all right. Mind, I still say that it'll be a Chudley year."  
  
" _Chudley?_ " Harry repeated in dismay. "The Canons?  They're _wretched!"_  
  
"They've had a bad run of luck -- "  
  
"Their Keeper scored on her own goal!"  
  
"Well, I reckon getting her was bad luck."  
  
"They traded for her.  They got her from an _American_ team.  How pathetic do you have to be to recruit American Quidditch players?"  
  
"That's not true.  The best Quidditch players in America want to come here because no one there cares about Quidditch. So the ones we trade for must be good. Except for… well, I bet she's good, really. She just got confused. Maybe someone did a Confundus charm on her!"  
  
"Right," Harry said. "Right under the noses of every Quidditch official in the south of England."  
  
"It could happen…"  
  
Neville, who knew nothing more about Quidditch than could possibly be avoided, excused himself to go looking for snacks. He wasn't sure if there would be an opportunity, but he supposed there would. It didn't look like Harry would be getting around to working the spells on the parchment just now, anyway.  
  
He wandered toward the rear of the train first, for no particular reason, and didn't see anything that looked like snacks. When he reached the end, he turned around again, meaning to go to the front, but a few carriages down, he saw someone else making her way up the corridor slowly, looking in the windows of the closed compartments as she passed them. Once, she raised her hand hopefully, but, after a moment, she lowered it and moved on.  
  
It was the girl from Flourish and Blotts. Neville tried to remember if he knew her name, but if he did, it was escaping him entirely. He thought of Professor Lupin saying that he hoped someone would make friends with her, and he knew he ought to go over and --  
  
She looked up and saw him, then came forward quickly, pulling her trunk along behind her.  It made an uneven grating sound along the floor, thumping across boards that were a little higher than their neighbors. _Krrrsh-thuck, krrrsh-thuck, krrrsh-thuck_. "Hello! Hello, there. I… I see you're not sitting with anyone, either. Perhaps we could…" She reached him. "I, er… We met at the book shop. I'm sure you don't remember. It was only briefly. I'm Hermione. Hermione Granger?"   
  
"I remember," Neville managed, when he realized that she'd paused. "I, er…"  
  
"I didn't think to ask anyone from my orientation if I might sit with them. I suppose I thought the Muggle-borns would sit together. But Dean Thomas is sitting with an Irish boy and they said there was no room, and I suppose Justin didn't see me wave just now. It's quite crowded in there. And Kevin Entwhistle just said he didn't want to sit with me. I think Su Li was going to, but…" Her voice faded, and Neville saw a certain crestfallen expression on her face for a moment before she went on and said, "At any rate, I don't see anything open. I don't suppose you can think of a place to sit?"  
  
Again, Neville found himself quite wrong-footed, feeling as if he'd been spun around rapidly several times with his eyes closed, then let loose and expected to run. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then managed, "I'm sitting." His face went hot. "I mean, obviously, I'm not sitting right now, but I have a place. My friend Harry, and Ron Weasley, and -- "  
  
The girl seemed to deflate, like dandelion leaves rapidly withering after an application of potion. "Oh," she said. "I see."  
  
"There's plenty of room with us," he said. "It's only the three of us in the whole compartment. If you wanted to join us."  
  
She bit her lip and looked at him with caution. "If you're sure it would be all right?"  
  
Neville wasn't sure, not really. He didn't think this girl was the sort who Harry would take to, and it would certainly mean not getting to whatever the secret in the parchment was, but he couldn't very well leave her wandering the train all the way to Scotland, either. So he said, "Of course it would. Come on. I'll introduce you."  
  
He led her back to the compartment he'd been in. There was a bad moment when he was sure he'd passed it without noticing, but before she realized that he was lost, he heard Harry's voice rising above the train sounds to say, "But _Chudley!_ They're terrible!"  
  
"I hope you don't mind Quidditch talk," Neville said. "My friend Harry's a bit wild for it."  
  
"I don't know anything about it. It's a sport, isn't it?"  
  
Neville despaired at the thought of Harry's face if she said something like this to him, but it was too late to turn back now.  
  
He opened the door.  
  
Harry and Ron, now quite animated in their conversation, looked up, then both did a double-take when they saw that Neville wasn't alone.  
  
"Er…" Harry started. "Hello?"  
  
Neville's throat closed up on him when he tried to open his mouth, but Hermione took a deep breath, then ran on, "Hello, I'm Hermione Granger, and Neville said I might sit with you, if it's entirely all right. He says you're talking about Quidditch, and I don't know anything about it, so perhaps you could tell me…?"  
  
"I…" Neville looked out the window. "I met Hermione in Diagon Alley." He looked at Harry. "She's in Lupin's group? Er… _Professor_ Lupin's group."  
  
Neville could see the calculations going on in Harry's head, and it took about five seconds for him to guess that there had been some sort of instruction. He swallowed, then nodded. "All right, then. Er… my mother's Muggle-born, too. Er…" He gestured around. "Have a seat, then. I'm Harry Potter. This is Ron Weasley."  
  
Ron waved, a little nonplused, as Hermione sat down beside him, across from Harry. Neville sat down on Harry's side.  
  
Harry gave him a vaguely irritated look, then said, "Right, then. Quidditch. What do you know to start with? Do you know broomsticks?"  
  
"Well, I know what they _are_ , of course…"  
  
It took most of the rest of the train ride for Harry and Ron, batting the subject back and forth between them, to explain Quidditch. This was punctuated by occasional outbursts about the best teams and the best players, and a rather heated debate about classic broomsticks that broke out somewhere past Manchester and lasted through the Yorkshire Dales. By the end of it, the sky was red outside, streaked with dark clouds, and if there was a conclusion to be made, Neville had missed it entirely.  
  
"So…" Hermione frowned. "If I understand correctly, the whole thing comes down to catching the Snitch, and the rest doesn't really matter?"  
  
"No!" Harry threw his hands in the air. "Everyone says that, but it's not true. Catching the Snitch ends the Game, but if the other side is more than a hundred and fifty points up on goals, you can still lose."  
  
"Right," Ron said. "I've seen it happen."  
  
"But why would someone catch it then?" Hermione asked.  
  
"Because that's the Seeker's job!'  
  
She shook her head. "I suppose I don't know a lot about sports, one way or another. I never follow the Muggle ones, either."  
  
Harry waited until she looked out the window, then raised his eyebrows in Neville's direction. Neville shrugged.  
  
At some point during the Quidditch conversation, a woman pushing a trolley of sweets had come through, and Neville and Harry had split the cost to buy quite a lot of everything for Hermione to try. Ron had made sheepish motions of searching his pockets for coins, but both Neville and Harry knew he didn't have them, so they pretended not to see his efforts. Once the Quidditch talk was over, Hermione made a point of sampling everything, though she said she'd best brush her teeth for an hour when she got to school, or she'd hear about it from her parents, who apparently took care of teeth for a living. This was turning into quite an interesting conversation, as Harry got her to talk about how they drilled holes in people's teeth and did surgery on them, but just as she was going through a particularly nasty description of something called a "root canal" (she had Ron and Harry's utter attention on it), they pulled into Hogsmeade station.  
  
Around their compartment, they could hear other students gathering their things, and on some unspoken signal, all four of them got up. Neville and Harry took their Transfigured satchels and threw them over their shoulders (Neville figured it would be just his luck if the spell broke as he got off the train and his full-sized trunk dragged him down and broke his neck on the way) and Ron and Hermione dragged their wheeled trunks along until they got out into the cool night air.  They were instructed to leave their luggage in a large pile at the station, and Neville supposed it would be transported up to the school somehow.  
  
Somewhere in the dark, a voice called, "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!"  
  
They'd started down the path that Neville thought must lead to the lake when he noticed that Hermione had fallen behind. He went back up the hill to her. "What is it?"  
  
"Just… nerves. I don't know where I'll be. It was hard enough finding a spot on the train. Where will I live? Professor Lupin said at orientation that older students like to make it a bit of a secret how people are chosen for houses, but that it's nothing that will hurt us, but what if it's something I don't know how to do? It wasn't in _Hogwarts, A History_. What if someone in the house has to ask for me or whatnot? No one older than I am knows me to ask for me!"  
  
Neville's own nervousness melted a little bit in the face of it. "I think you'll be fine. Granny's told me that there's just something that tells you your house. I never heard of anyone not getting any house. And you'd be good at a bunch of them. Though I'm pretty sure they'll say that _I_ can barely do magic and ought to stay home for a few more years."  
  
"They can do that?"  
  
"I don't think so. Let's hope not. But you said you'd been doing magic, so that shouldn't be a problem for you."  
  
"Oh. Right. I can do magic." She smiled.  
  
"Come on. Let's catch up with Ron and Harry."  
  
"I don't think they like me."  
  
"They liked the surgery stories."  
  
"Oh." She took a couple of deep, gulping breaths, then said. "All right, then. Let's go." She turned sharply and nearly marched down the path and around the bend, where they got their first view of Hogwarts, shining in the night across a moonlight-sparkled lake. Rubeus Hagrid was getting the students settled in a small fleet of boats waiting at the shore.  
  
Harry and Ron were holding one, looking impatiently back up the path. Neville and Hermione hurried to join them.  
  
They sailed together across the lake, Hagrid alone in a boat at the front, looking up at the gleaming castle above them, the boats magically propelling themselves into the night. Something large and slimy seemed to move among them, causing some of the first years to scream, but Hermione said that it was just a giant squid that she'd read about in -- of course -- _Hogwarts, A History_. This interested Ron a great deal, and he spent the rest of the ride trying to get a look at it.  
  
They got to the far shore, and Hagrid led them into a tunnel under the school, finally docking at a pier beside a set of stone steps leading up to a heavy wooden door. Hagrid helped everyone out of their boats, then went up to the door, and solemnly knocked on it three times. It opened immediately, and Professor McGonagall came out. Harry smiled and waved, but Neville knew better. She didn't respond. Harry made a face, which she quite unfortunately _did_ see, and raised her eyebrows.  
  
"Er," Harry muttered, "sorry."  
  
"Very well, Mr. Potter," she said.  
  
"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid.  
  
"Thank you, Hagrid, I will take them from here."  
  
She led them into a huge entrance hall. Neville had a picture of his mother on the grand staircase here, on the day she'd left school, waving manically at the camera. He looked around tentatively while Professor McGonagall gave a brief talk about what was about to happen, not actually revealing anything, just telling them what the school's houses were, and that they'd be given a chance to "smarten up." She led them into a little room off to the side to get themselves ready, then excused herself to make sure the Great Hall was prepared for them.  
  
Neville straightened his robes a bit, and Harry went back to his never-ending battle to put his hair in order. Hermione tried desperately to put her thick, frizzy hair into a plait, giving up at last and finger-combing it back to where it was before. Ron's robe was clearly second hand. It was a size too big for him and the hem was frayed. There was nothing he could do about it, though, so he just stood there, looking uncomfortable.  
  
Across the room, Neville spotted Draco Malfoy with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. He tapped Harry's shoulder and pointed them out.  
  
Harry drew his wand, eyes sparkling. "Think we should hex them?"  
  
"No. Just… " Neville nodded over at Hermione.  
  
Harry took his meaning, and stepped up beside Neville, blocking Hermione from Malfoy's sightline. So far, he hadn't noticed her. Ron looked over and realized who was there, and joined the line.  
  
"What are you looking at?" Hermione asked, interested.  
  
Malfoy heard her voice and glanced over. With a sinking heart, Neville realized that their guard line was the best possible way of conveying that they were hiding something.  
  
Malfoy gave them a puzzled look, then a dark-haired girl with an upturned nose whispered in his ear, and he smirked unpleasantly.  
  
Luckily, they were spared from any confrontation by the return of Professor McGonagall, who put everyone in two lines. Neville found himself behind Harry and across from Ron. Hermione ended up just behind Ron, and beside her -- behind Neville -- was a pretty girl named Hannah Abbott, who Neville had met at a few Ministry functions. She was fidgeting almost as much as Hermione, and they started talking nervously to each other as Professor McGonagall led everyone to the Great Hall.  
  
Neville had been here once four years ago, when Gran had given a speech to the school governors and parents over the summer. It had been when people were threatening to remove their children from school over Professor Lupin's appointment. Gran gave a long talk -- a bit of a scold, really -- about what sorts of people would deny their children a good teacher, and one who'd discovered and broken a very powerful curse on the position, just because he had a magical disease that was quite manageable with modern methods. Neville wasn't sure how much good that particular speech had done, though it may have been effective for some reason, as, in the end, almost no one had chosen to remove their children from the school. Of the ones who did, Gran only sniffed and said, "Good riddance to the cowards." Neville hadn't paid that speech a great deal of attention -- Gran liked to talk, and he'd seen her at the Wizengamot, talking about other things, and she hadn't talked much about it elsewhere. He'd just goggled around at this hall, not really registering that it was in the school he was supposed to go to. The ceiling almost seemed to be a window, showing the weather outside. Now, through the floating candles, he could see the clear night sky.  
  
Professor McGonagall led them all up to the front of the room, where a very old wizard's hat sat on a four-legged stool. Its tip bent back and forth, and Neville felt like it was getting a look at them. This wasn't unheard of in magical objects, so he wasn't entirely surprised when a hole near the brim opened, and it began to sing.  
  
_Oh you may not think I'm pretty,  
But don't judge on what you see,  
I'll eat myself if you can find  
A smarter hat than me.  
  
You can keep your bowlers black,  
Your top hats sleek and tall,  
For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat  
And I can cap them all._  
  
Neville glanced around as the song went on, describing all of the houses and what sorts of people were in them -- brave for Gryffindor, brainy for Ravenclaw, patient and loyal for Hufflepuff, cunning for Slytherin. Neville wished he were one or the other of them. Maybe not cunning; he'd leave that to Slytherin. But he couldn't figure out where you were supposed to be if you were just… average. Normal.  
  
When the song was over, Professor McGonagall stepped up and unrolled a very fancy looking sheet of parchment. "When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted." She looked up and called, "Abbott, Hannah!"  
  
Hannah nearly jumped out of her skin behind Neville, and pushed through the group. She sat down and put the hat on. It looked very strange on her, like she'd found it in an old attic. Neville saw it moving slightly for a moment, then it shouted, "HUFFLEPUFF!" The Hufflepuff table cheered.  
  
Susan Bones gave Neville a faint smile on her way to the hat, and was also sent to HUFFLEPUFF, no surprise. The next two people, Neville didn't know -- Terry Boot and Mandy Brocklehurst. They were both sent to RAVENCLAW, and a girl called Lavender Brown went to GRYFFINDOR. Each table greeted their new recruits with fond applause. Millicent Bulstrode, a stocky girl with a plain face, became a SLYTHERIN after a good bit of consideration by the hat. She seemed a little less than excited. So did the Slytherin table, where people couldn't muster more than a polite clap.  
  
As people passed Harry, he greeted several. Neville decided that he must know them from the Ministry, or the days he spent wandering Diagon Alley. Ron seemed to know a good few as well. Even Hermione gave little waves to other Muggle-borns she knew from orientation, like Justin Finch-Fletchley, a curly-haired boy who was put into HUFFLEPUFF.  
  
A moment later, Hermione herself was called. Her nervousness had turned into a kind of bouncing energy, and she nearly jammed the hat onto her head. Neville fully expected it to make her a Ravenclaw -- the fact that she'd apparently already memorized _Hogwarts, A History_ suggested it -- but instead, it called out "GRYFFINDOR!"  
  
Neville glanced at Ron and Harry, who were both from old Gryffindor families, and, to his disappointment, saw that neither of them looked pleased, though at least they weren't actively hostile. The Gryffindor table, on the other hand, applauded her wildly and made room for her.  
  
There were a handful of students after Hermione, sorted into all four houses, then Professor McGonagall said, "Longbottom, Neville!"  
  
The Great Hall fell strangely quiet, and Neville could hear people whispering. He looked up for a moment at a particularly loud whisper, and unfortunately, tripped over someone's foot, so he came lurching out into the small empty space in front of the hat. There were titters around the hall, and Draco Malfoy outright laughed. Professor McGonagall silenced him with a look, then steadied Neville by touching his arm and leading him to the stool.  
  
"You know what your grandmother would say," she whispered, giving him one of her rare smiles.  
  
Neville did know what Gran would say: _It's not important what an ignoramus like that says or does, and your dignity is not dependent on the opinion of other children. You have a duty. Go forward_.  
  
So Neville took a deep breath and sat down on the stool, ignoring the titters, the whispering, and the pointing. He took the hat and put it on his head. It slid down over his eyes, which helped block out the room.  
  
"Ah," a voice whispered in Neville's ear. He felt the hat move around his head. "Interesting, quite interesting. We can certainly rule out Slytherin. You have no slyness to you at all."  
  
_Thank you,_ Neville thought.  
  
"Yes, I imagine it would hold little appeal to your mind. You do have a good mind, of course, but Ravenclaw… I think not."  
  
_There's Hufflepuff,_ Neville suggested.  
  
"Yes, yes. You'd do very well in Hufflepuff, but would it satisfy you? Would it make you who you want to be or merely who you believe yourself to be?" Neville couldn't think of an answer to this rather alarming question before the hat went on. "I think your heart is truly a Gryffindor's heart."  
  
_I'm not brave at all! The only time I ever fought anyone, I was a baby, and it was really my dad fighting!_  
  
"You have greatness inside of you. Gryffindor would not allow it to be idle."  
  
_I'm not great! I'm only famous by accident._  
  
"Fame is not your greatness. Your greatness is in your refusal to waver."  
  
_I waver! I waver all the time! Really, it's just a fluke that anyone thinks anything about me. It wasn't me at all!_  
  
"You would languish in Hufflepuff…"  
  
Neville bit his lip. He thought about Hufflepuff, about how nice it would be not to compete with people like Harry -- or James or Sirius or his own Grandmother, for that matter. He thought about just curling up in an armchair at night, and not having to confront anyone or stand up or…  
  
For an instant -- only an instant, he would tell himself later -- something inside of him rebelled. Instead of seeing himself comfortable, he saw himself buried in the basement, slowly getting more and more silent, getting fatter and fatter. Then he saw himself standing up, standing between Hermione and Malfoy, standing taller and taller…  
  
The hat yelled, "GRYFFINDOR!"  
  
And Neville's sorting was over.  
  
The Great Hall exploded with applause, and the hat was lifted from his head. He blinked owlishly, wondering if that really was all there was to it, if he might not put it back on and continue the conversation until it came to whatever senses a hat could possibly have.  
  
But then he looked back at Harry and Ron, who were clapping now, and at the Gryffindor table, where Hermione was already making space for him, scooting down the bench as she grinned.  
  
He stood up slowly, and made his way to the Gryffindor table.  



End file.
